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9 


MARRIAGE and FAMILY LIFE 
among STRANGE PEOPLES 



TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 

UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME 



Percy Holmes Boynton 

THE CHALLENGE OF MODERN CRITICISM 

Tom Peete Cross 

HARPER AND BARD 

Robert Morss Lovett 

PREFACE TO FICTION 


Adolf Carl Noe 

FERNS, FOSSILS AND FUEL 


Louise Marie Spaeth 

MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE AMONG STRANGE PEOPLES 


James Westfall Thompson 

THE LIVING PAST 

















LOUISE MARIE SPAETH 


/ 


DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY 


OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY 


Marriage and Family Life 
Among Strange Peoples 

STUDIES OF ACTUAL SAVAGE LIFE 



THOMAS S. ROCKWELL COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 1931 

hO., 




CHICAGO 


Tdg> 


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COPYRIGHT, 1931, BY 
THOMAS S. ROCKWELL COMPANY 
CHICAGO 



Printed in United States of America 

™ 22 1931 

©CIA 38361 t) 


CONTENTS 


ONE 

Early Forms of Marriage 

11 

TWO 

Getting Married 

19 

THREE 

Primitive Family Life 

32 

FOUR 

When a Child is Born 

54 

FIVE 

Adolescence and Initiation 

77 

six 

Daily Life in the Tribe 

100 





MARRIAGE and FAMILY LIFE 
among STRANGE PEOPLES 






4 





ONE 


EARLY FORMS OF MARRIAGE 

V EILED in mystery, the beginnings of human life 
have intrigued man throughout the ages. It has 
been a fertile subject for speculation, embodied in fanciful 
myth and imaginative poetry. Only in recent years, 
through the eyes of science, has man been able to seek 
a partial solution of this time-old mystery. 

Delving into the crust of the earth, explorers have 
come upon fossil skeletal remains embedded by nature 
in geological strata. Archeologists have uncovered the 
remnants of human habitations and the tools and im¬ 
plements used by the early denizens of the earth. Such 
fragments are evidence of the material things men made 
and used, but they give no clue to the social forms of 
life in those prehistoric days. Family customs, religions, 
government, have left no record. Written history de¬ 
scribing them covers only about six thousands years, 
a brief period in the million years or more that man 
has lived upon this globe. In the search for further in- 


11 


MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


formation, we must turn to the crude savages or un¬ 
civilized tribes living today in various parts of the world. 

Although these folk are our contemporaries, many of 
them have had only slight contact with higher civiliza¬ 
tions or even with other primitive people. They have 
maintained their ancient customs almost unchanged. 
Even those who have come in contact with civilized peoples 
tend to cling to their traditional habits, and have changed 
very little during the long centuries. We can well believe 
that their ways of living are little different from the ways 
of their ancestors in the dim past before the dawn of 
history. 

The scientists who concern themselves with the life of 
primitive peoples are called anthropologists. The word 
anthropos in Greek means “man”; anthropology, there¬ 
fore, is the science of man. These scientists, after a thor¬ 
ough training, have gone to live, often for a long time, 
with primitive tribes in various parts of the world. They 
have studied the customs and habits of such people very 
carefully. They have revealed to us the great variety 
of ways in which man, in different parts of the world, 
and at different times, has woven his life pattern. 

Anthropologists speak of all the habits that man has 
acquired or learned as his culture. In that sense, every¬ 
body has a culture—the Eskimo, the American Indian, 


12 



EARLY FORMS OF MARRIAGE 


the Bushman, or the Hottentot, as well as the highly 
civilized and educated man. They also distinguish be¬ 
tween historic peoples, who have left written records of 
their life, and primitive or pre-literate peoples who have 
left no such records. 

In general, a people’s habits are bound up with certain 
activities which is called their culture pattern. This 
“pattern” includes the kind of family life they have, and 
the material things they have learned to make and use. 
It embraces their organization for economic pursuits and 
for the regulation and control of other aspects of their 
life together. Their language, their art, their religion, 
and their means of defending themselves or of making 
war are all parts of their culture pattern. 

Although most of our ideas about primitive peoples 
have had to undergo a thorough overhauling in the face 
of actual investigations of their customs, no more sur¬ 
prising and revolutionary discoveries have been revealed 
than those concerning their marriage forms and family 
life. Nearly all our popular conceptions of primitive 
marriage have gone by the board, completely discredited 
by the new facts disclosed in the careful studies of an¬ 
thropologists. Nowhere have they found people living 
without some kind of family organization, though the 
type may differ widely from the one we are familiar 


13 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


with. The lowliest people often have a more minutely 
regulated form of marriage than our own. Nowhere has 
been found the freedom from restraint which we have 
imagined savages possessed in this respect. No tribe 
has been discovered living in sexual promiscuity. The 
sexual freedom which many permit within definite groups 
before marriage always ceases when marriage takes place. 
Marriage for them usually becomes a relationship as 
chaste as our own and more conventional. 

Mankind has experimented chiefly with two types of 
marriage—monogamy and polygamy. By monogamy 
we mean a family system like our own, in which a more 
or less permanent union with one person is prescribed. 
Polygamy is a system in which either a man has many 
wives or a woman many husbands. When the woman 
has more than one husband at a time, we call the arrange¬ 
ment polyandry. When the man has several wives at 
once, we call it polygyny. 

For a long time modern Europeans and Americans 
have supposed monogamy to be the last and highest step 
in the development of human marriage. It has been 
their belief that it appeared only in the comparatively 
civilized group and that the less civilized a people were, 
the more husbands or wives they might have and the 
looser their family organization would be. The idea 


14 



EARLY FORMS OF MARRIAGE 


prevailed that if one could only go back far enough in 
history, he would find the family disappearing com¬ 
pletely. Savages, according to this idea, mated promis¬ 
cuously like animals. Wherever the monogamic family 
existed, it was considered a development from a previous 
condition of polygamy; and, before that, of sex-com¬ 
munism and promiscuity. 

Anthropologists have found this neat progression, so 
flattering to man’s self-esteem, a theory which the facts 
do not support. They find, for instance, that strict 
monogamy prevails among the Andaman Islanders, a 
people in an extremely low state of culture. Yet his¬ 
tory tells us that polygamy has flourished among com¬ 
paratively highly civilized peoples. The Hebrews of Old 
Testament times had plural wives, and so did the Greeks 
of Homer’s day. It was the custom among historic 
peoples as well as among pre-literate groups. Anthro¬ 
pologists now recognize the fact that a great variety of 
types or patterns of marriage have existed in the past and 
exist now, side by side in point of time. 

Even where polygamy is permitted, it is never possible 
for all the men to have more than one wife, or all the 
women to have more than one husband, as the case may 
be. Males and females born in all human societies are 
approximately equal in number, so that in most tribes 


15 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


if one man has two wives, another man must go without 
any wife. When something upsets this equality, such 
as the dangerous life of the men of some Eskimo tribes, 
with an excess of women as a result, or the practice of 
girl infanticide, which produces more men than women, 
in such tribes as the Todas, who live in southern India, 
we often find polygyny or polyandry. The Wahumas 
of East Africa, another tribe that kills many of its girl 
babies, solve the problem of excess men by permitting 
several brothers to share the same wife. This is a com¬ 
mon form of polyandry, though it terminates among 
the Wahumas when the woman bears her first child. The 
eldest brother then automatically becomes the exclusive 
husband, and the other brothers must find themselves 
another wife. 

All the tribes who kill a certain proportion of their 
girl babies do not practice polyandry, nor do all the 
tribes where there is an excess of women practice polygyny. 
Consequently it is impossible to make any hard and fast 
generalization concerning the relationship between the 
ratio of the sexes and the form of marriage customary 
in a tribe. Probably the traditional form of polygamous 
marriage in a particular tribe originated in some dis¬ 
turbance of the ratio between the sexes and continued 
long after these special conditions had vanished. 


16 



EARLY FORMS OF MARRIAGE 


Where polygyny is customary, as among the Chukchi 
of Siberia, some North American Indians, many African 
tribes, and innumerable others, every man in the tribe does 
not have several wives. A number of wives is a privilege 
only the rich and successful men can afford. The second 
wife of such a man is, indeed, often chosen at the request 
of the first. A successful man in a primitive tribe gives 
many feasts and entertainments, and as with us, his 
wife must do most of the hard work in preparing them. 
Slaves or servants frequently are unknown in such tribes; 
so the first wife asks her husband to marry another woman 
to help her with the family duties. When this takes place, 
the second wife often must serve the first, who retains 
a higher rank in the household. 

Such an arrangement does not cause the jealousy or 
emotional disturbances it would in our monogamic fam¬ 
ily system. The prestige and rank of the first wife are 
not diminished by the presence of a second or third wife, 
and so she does not resent them. An exception to this 
custom is found among the Omaha Indians, where all 
wives are of the same rank. Here, the second wife is 
usually a sister or other relative of the first, and little 
friction results. But such a situation is infrequent among 
the Omaha, who are a monogamous tribe except in the 
case of the richest men and chiefs. 


17 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


Wide variations exist as to the degrees to which polyg¬ 
amy is practiced in any primitive people which permits it. 
Often the theory and its practice are different. Things 
which are sanctioned by the tribal customs are not done 
as a matter of everyday living. As a result, we find that 
polygyny or polyandry is rarely the only form of marriage, 
but that one or the other always exists simultaneously with 
some form of monogamy. Custom, to be sure, permits 
many wives or husbands, but the privilege is not univer¬ 
sally accepted. As a matter of fact, monogamy prevails in 
the majority of primitive tribes. 


X 


18 



TWO 


GETTING MARRIED IN A 
TRIBAL COMMUNITY 

E NTERING into marriage, among the primitive 
peoples, is far from the free and easy arrangement 
that we have long regarded it. The business of getting 
oneself a wife is hedged about with innumerable restric¬ 
tions, and regulated to the minutest detail. Whom a 
man cannot marry, whom he must or may marry, how 
he should go about choosing a wife—all these matters 
are prescribed with an exactness that might well astonish 
modern civilized people. And the ceremonies of court¬ 
ship and marriage are often exceedingly elaborate. 

The cave-man tactics, so widely believed to be the rule 
among primitive tribes, are, indeed, rarely sanctioned. 
The last thing that the average savage can do is to help 
himself to any woman in the tribe whom he fancies. Even 
marriage by the capture of a woman from another tribe, 
one of the favorite dreams of earlier speculation about 
primitive man, in cold reality plays an insignificant part. 
The North American Indians, who the white man thought 


19 


MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


always captured their brides, have been found to marry 
almost entirely within their own tribes. Capture is 
frowned on because it leads to feuds which are highly 
undesirable, even in Indian civilization. 

In some tribes, among the Koryak in Siberia, every 
marriage is marked by a fight between the groom and 
the bride’s relatives. But this is only a convention and 
a test of the groom’s ability to protect himself, and is 
not capture at all. Everybody’s consent to the match 
has been obtained beforehand. Nearly every example 
we know of apparent marriage by capture has, on closer 
study, turned out in a like manner. It is merely a dramati¬ 
zation of capture that is a part of the wedding ceremony. 

Instead of these high-handed methods, or the promis¬ 
cuous acts which civilized people like to imagine as cus¬ 
tomary among savages, there is almost no freedom, in 
any primitive tribe, from an extensive body of conven¬ 
tions. Families often arrange the marriages, which are 
largely family affairs anyway. In many parts of the 
world there is infant betrothal. Among the Ewe tribes 
in Africa, it is even customary for a man to request in 
marriage the next daughter of a woman he likes—and 
he marries her when she has grown up. 

The commonest and the strictest regulation in many 
tribes is against the marriage of close kin. Incestuous 


20 



GETTING MARRIED IN A TRIBAL COMMUNITY 


marriage, as between brother and sister, or mother and 
son, is one of the most serious crimes that a member of 
such a tribe can commit. It is guarded against by all 
sorts of elaborate customs. The few tribes which do not 
have such restrictions are those in which there is a strong 
hereditary royal family, or a highly developed caste sys¬ 
tem. Where such a caste prevails, there may be no one 
of high enough rank for a man to marry except his own 
sister. Marriages of this sort were common until recent 
times among the royal families of the Hawaiians, and 
a few other peoples. But while such unions were cus¬ 
tomary among the ruling class, as in the case of some 
African tribes, they were never sanctioned among the 
common people. 

Incestuous marriages, however, have not been confined 
to the rulers of certain primitive tribes; they are known 
to have existed among some historic peoples of high civili¬ 
zation. Cambyses, an ancient Persian king, married his 
sister; the famous Cleopatra of Egypt married her brother 
Ptolemy for reasons of state; and Abraham, of Bible fame, 
married his half-sister, Sarah. 

Aside from such exceptions, the marriage of those re¬ 
lated by kinship is prohibited among primitive tribes to 
an even greater degree than among civilized peoples, 
sometimes in ways that seem strange to the latter. The 


21 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


restrictions, for instance, may extend to a whole tribe 
or clan. Violations of the regulations against such mar¬ 
riages are often punishable by death. The Andaman 
Islanders, who are among the most primitive of human 
beings, object to the marriage of even the most remote kin. 

A common restriction, found in various parts of the 
world, prescribes which cousins may marry and which 
may not. The children of a brother may marry the 
children of his sister. Such cousins are called “cross 
cousins.” But the children of brothers may not marry, 
nor may the children of sisters. Such cousins are called 
“parallel cousins” or “siblings.” They look upon each 
other as brother and sister rather than as cousins. In 
some places the rule is obligatory that cross cousins must 
marry, while other tribes merely prefer such an arrange¬ 
ment but do not insist on it in every case. Peoples who 
maintain this peculiar restriction are found in Melanesia, 
Fiji, southern Asia, northwestern America, Nicaragua, 
and South and East Africa. 

Another common type of regulation requires a man 
to marry the younger sister of his wife when the latter 
dies. This is called the sororate . It sometimes extends 
even further, so that when a man marries he becomes the 
potential, and in some cases the actual, husband of all 
his wife’s younger sisters. 


22 



GETTING MARRIED IN A TRIBAL COMMUNITY 


The reverse situation also holds in some tribes. A 
widow must marry the next younger brother of her dead 
husband, even though she is a generation older than he. 
This is known as the levirate. The sororate and the 
levirate may occur together. In some tribes either form 
may be compulsory, in others, only recommended. 

Many tribes also require that all marriages be outside 
the group, be it tribe, clan, or village, usually on the 
theory that all members of the group are too closely 
related for marriage. This practice is called exogamy. 
On the other hand, some tribes require that all marriages 
be within the group. This is called endogamy. 

Marriage in primitive peoples is not so much a romantic 
union of individuals as a contract or arrangement between 
families. The parents either arrange the marriage entirely 
or play a large part in the proceedings after the bride 
has been chosen. Sometimes the parents even go so far 
as to arrange a double union, in which the son and 
daughter of one family marry the son and daughter of 
the other family, the betrothal taking place before the 
children are out of their cradles. But this exchange of a 
son for a son-in-law and a daughter for a daughter-in- 
law is rather rare. 

Purchasing the bride is a far more common practice. 
There are many tribes where she is bought and paid for 


23 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


by the groom and his family. Countless complicated 
variations of this method of getting a wife exist. Among 
the Kirghiz of Siberia, a Turkish tribe, a father arranges 
for the purchase of a wife for his son before the latter 
is ten years old. He at once begins to accumulate the 
enormous bride-price of eighty head of cattle, which he 
pays on the installment plan. A considerable number of 
installments must be made before the boy is even allowed 
to see his future wife. The marriage does not take place 
until the price is paid in full. As a result of this custom, 
girls are very valuable among the Kirghiz. The greatest 
blessing the gods can bestow upon a man is a large family 
of daughters. 

Where brides are so expensive, polygyny is rather infre¬ 
quent. Divorces also are few, for not many men can 
afford to pay a high price for a wife and then lose his 
whole investment by divorcing her. 

The Kai of Papua in New Guinea do not pay the bride- 
price to the girl’s father but to her brothers and maternal 
uncles. Boars’ tusks, a hog, and other valuables form the 
payment; the father is compensated by a small amount 
of labor from the prospective son-in-law. As in many 
other tribes, the groom’s family helps to make the pay¬ 
ment, and the wife is inherited by her husband’s brothers 
and other kinsmen when he dies. If she elopes with 


24 



GETTING MARRIED IN A TRIBAL COMMUNITY 


some other man, as sometimes happens, the marriage- 
payment must be returned to the family of the affronted 
husband. Though the wife herself is inherited by her 
husband’s family, her property is not, and any children 
born to them belong to her people. 

Among the Thonga of South Africa, the price for 
a bride is usually several head of cattle and some hoes. 
The levirate prevails among them. The wife is inherited 
by a member of her husband’s family, and the children 
are also his. If she dies childless, he gets his money 
back, on the ground that she was of no use to him. 
The bride-price is paid in installments; sometimes the 
marriage takes place before the woman is completely 
paid for. If something is still owing when she dies, the 
children become a mortgage. They belong to her family 
until the price is paid up. More than one wife is quite 
rare, for few men can ever accumulate the price for a 
second. 

The Indian tribes of the northwest coast of America, 
such as the Klamath, the Hidatsa, the Shasta, and the 
Yurok, place great emphasis on the price they pay for 
their wives. A woman who has not been bought has 
neither social standing nor worth in the tribe, and the 
amount paid for a woman determines the family’s social 
position. Only chaste women are bought—a great in- 

25 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


ducement to morality in the younger women of the tribe. 
When women quarrel, they taunt each other with the low 
price for which they were purchased, and even the children 
boast of the prices that were paid for their respective 
mothers. 

The Shasta arrange for a marriage and agree on the 
price before the children who are to be married reach 
adolescence. The relatives of the future groom help 
gather the required sum, which consists of beads and 
dent alia, or shells that look like bears’ teeth. As a result, 
all the brothers of the groom have a financial interest 
in the bride, and both the levirate and the sororate are 
compulsory. Daughters are highly prized. A man who 
has several may easily become wealthy in the business 
of marrying them off. If a woman does not like her 
husband, she has the right to go home to her family after 
she has had three or four children. She has then per¬ 
formed a sufficient return for the money that was paid 
for her. 

There are numerous other ways, in most tribes, of 
getting a wife besides buying her. Purchase is usually 
considered the most respectable way, but not everyone 
in a tribe may follow this plan, any more than every man 
in a polygynous tribe has several wives. The Crow In¬ 
dians of Montana, for instance, can marry in any of sev- 


26 



GETTING MARRIED IN A TRIBAL COMMUNITY 


eral ways and have the marriage recognized as legal. 
However, purchase is always the ideal and most honorable 
way, and only virtuous girls are ever bought. A Crow 
can also make a purely love match, and contract a per¬ 
manent marriage without paying any price for his wife. 
This kind of marriage falls considerably short of the 
ideal, and the participants are not as highly regarded 
socially; nevertheless many such marriages take place. 
The Crow are somewhat lax in their restrictions on the 
conduct of young girls and men. Many a love affair 
develops at their seasonal festivals, in what to us would 
seem a highly unconventional manner. A Crow man 
may also have to marry his brother’s widow, or the 
younger sister of his first wife; for the sororate is com¬ 
pulsory. At certain times of the year he may also 
capture a woman from an alien tribe. At other seasons, 
the tribe itself holds contests in which the wife of the 
defeated participant goes to the victor, if he wants her. 

Buying a wife is often so complicated a procedure that 
it is difficult to distinguish it from the elaborate exchange 
of gifts and courtesies which usually takes place at every 
primitive wedding. Quite often, services to the future 
father-in-law are not considered payments for the bride; 
they are but tests of the groom’s endurance and fitness to 
support a wife. It frequently is hard to distinguish be- 


27 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


tween peoples who have out-and-out purchase and those 
who mark a wedding by the ceremonial exchange of gifts, 
and the performance of services. 

Among the Chinook, a northwest Indian tribe in 
America, when a man marries a girl from a different 
village, the ceremonies and visits between the two fam¬ 
ilies last for months. The relatives of the groom go 
to the girl’s village to “buy” her and make many gifts 
of dentalia, which her father divides among all his rela¬ 
tives. The bride then goes on a visit to her fiance’s home, 
and her family returns the gifts or purchase money, with 
more dentalia and even slaves. These visits, back and 
forth, with accompanying gifts, go on for months and 
even years. They usually do not end until the first 
child is born to the young couple. 

The Kwakiutl Indians of Vancouver Island go to an 
almost incredible extreme of ceremonial when a mar¬ 
riage takes place. They are a wealthier tribe than the 
Chinook, and are called the “capitalists of the north.” 
They have a rigid caste system of nobles, commoners, 
and slaves. Men of the middle class often buy rank 
through marriage with women of title. The marriage 
ceremonies begin with the sending of four men from the 
groom’s family to determine the “price” of the woman 
he wishes to marry. They distribute blankets among 


28 



GETTING MARRIED IN A TRIBAL COMMUNITY 


her relatives. The prospective groom is then put through 
an elaborate series of tests to prove his fitness. A wealthy 
man, however, especially if he is favored by the girl’s 
family, can hire a substitute to take these tests for him. 
After he is accepted, repeated visits and exchanges of 
gifts go on between the two families. They last for six 
months. Not until they are all over is the marriage 
complete according to the tribal code. 

All these tribes frown severely on any violations of 
the elaborate conventions which surround their marriages. 

Though marriage among most peoples is an established 
procedure with every step in the proceedings prescribed 
by tribal tradition, definite and separate methods exist 
in many cases by which a young man may indicate his 
preference for a certain girl, or she for him. There are 
numerous courtship customs which show plainly that 
romantic love, as we know it, may stir the savage bosom. 
Some tribes provide for the elopement of two young 
people, if family pressure on them is too great. The 
Chinook consent to the marriage of a couple who have 
eloped three times in spite of their parents’ opposition. 
Suicide, for the Klamath woman, is the way of escape 
from a thwarted love. 

A Chinook man carves symbols on the trees which 
he hopes the girl he loves will see and understand. The 


29 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


women of the Yukaghir in Siberia express their love with 
symbolic scrolls on birch bark. A Cheyenne Indian 
was expected to court a girl for five years. The Trobriand 
Islanders use love potions and magic formulae to obtain 
the love of a desired person of the opposite sex. 

The Omaha Indians strictly prohibit the free associa¬ 
tion of their youths and maidens. Yet their tribal customs 
provide for the expression of romantic love in courtship, 
and so make possible marriages based on mutual affection. 
The young suitor makes known his presence to the girl 
he courts by playing a melody composed for the occasion 
on his flute. If the girl is inclined to favor him, she 
slips silently away from the family circle in the lodge 
and meets him outside. Lovers may also exchange a 
few words near the community spring. Although the 
girl is never allowed to fetch water unless accompanied 
by some other woman, she manages to lag behind her 
companion when she hears her lover’s flute, and the two 
steal a few moments together. Friendship between two 
boys or two girls also plays an important part in the 
courtship. It is often the suitor’s intimate friend who 
acts as a go-between to secure an interview with the girl 
his friend wishes to marry. If she favors the suit, the 
young man himself appears before her parents and 
pleads for her hand. If the girl’s father accepts him, his 


30 



GETTING MARRIED IN A TRIBAL COMMUNITY 


family immediately makes presents to all her relatives, 
which her family reciprocate. Many feasts accompany 
the exchange of presents. After the marriage, the bride¬ 
groom must work a year for his father-in-law to prove 
his fitness to be a husband. If the family of either 
objects to the marriage, it does not thereby become 
impossible, but there are no feasts or gifts. 

A Zuni Indian youth makes his own choice of bride. 
If the match is agreeable to the young woman’s family, 
he pays them a visit lasting several days. The girl’s 
father lectures him on his duties as a husband, and her 
mother asks him to be kind and good to his wife. After 
the visit, the young man informs his own parents of 
his acceptance. If they approve, a dress is sent as a 
gift to the bride. This present begins an exchange of 
gifts and feasts, which constitutes the wedding ceremony. 

In a number of Australian tribes, an engagement is 
publicly announced at a tribal gathering. The girl wears 
a necklace as a sign of the betrothal. The wedding is 
often accompanied by magic-religious ceremonies pur¬ 
porting to give supernatural sanction to the marriage. 

K 


31 




THREE 

PRIMITIVE FAMILY LIFE 

I N FEW primitive tribes does marriage bring with it 
any lessening in the restrictions that surround the 
individual’s life. The tribal institutions and conventions 
are just as numerous and binding on married people as 
they are on unmarried members. Where the couple shall 
live, how they shall support themselves, or who must 
support them, what work each must do in connection 
with the new home, and what property each can own, 
are definitely prescribed among every primitive people. 

Such customs differ in the various tribes throughout 
the world. They are so closely interwoven with the whole 
culture pattern of the individual tribe that it is extremely 
difficult to separate the family conventions from those 
connected with the economic or political structure. Often 
the reason for a particular family arrangement lies in 
some peculiar economic factor in the tribe’s life or in 
its religious beliefs. The practices are so different from 
our own that it is doubly hard to understand them with- 


32 


PRIMITIVE FAMILY LIFE 


out a knowledge of the economic, religious, and political 
background of the tribe we are examining. And no mat¬ 
ter how crude and simple a primitive people may be, 
there are always strict regulations on the family and its 
life. Every tribe has evolved some solution of the prob¬ 
lem of living together that is in keeping with its conditions 
of life. 

The place where a family lives and its economic sup¬ 
port are often closely associated. In some tribes, it is cus¬ 
tomary for the husband to follow his wife to her mother’s 
home, or to that of her family, even if it is in another 
village. The Zuni men do so, and the husband remains 
a guest in his mother-in-law’s house throughout his mar¬ 
ried life. A Zuni household consists of the mother, all 
the daughters, single and married, their husbands and 
children, and all the unmarried, divorced, or widowed 
sons. The married sons, of course, live at the homes 
of their mothers-in-law. The Zuni man never completely 
separates himself from his own mother when he marries. 
He always keeps his most valued possessions, such as his 
ceremonial costumes and his prayer-sticks, at her house. 
When his wife dies or divorces him, he simply goes back 
to his mother’s home, where he is always welcome. 

An Omaha Indian husband also goes to live with his 
wife’s family, but the arrangement is only a temporary 


33 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


one. During the period he lives there, he has to work 
for his father-in-law to prove his worth. This service 
is not the working off of a bride-price, but a test of ability. 
When the first child is bom, the period of service ends, 
and a separate household is set up. 

Newly-weds among the Cheyenne Indians go to live 
in a lodge near the husband’s father or uncle while a 
new home is being built for them. The groom’s male 
relatives prepare the poles for the new tent, while the 
bride’s female relatives make the skin covering, and the 
bride herself adorns it elaborately with her own handi¬ 
work. Where the new tent is to be set up is prescribed, 
usually a certain distance from her former home. 

In certain Melanesian tribes the husband does not live 
in the hut with his wife, but in a men’s club-house where 
all the men of the village reside. He goes home to eat the 
meals his wife prepares and serves him, and he visits 
her at night. The rest of his time is spent at “the Club.” 
In these tribes, the men’s secret societies and club-houses 
play a large part in the community life. Women are as 
strictly excluded as they are in our country from the 
lodges of Masons or Odd Fellows. In some tribes, such 
as the Hupa Indians, the women lived in club-houses 
apart from the men during the winter months. 

Other tribes have residence arrangements that are com- 


34 



PRIMITIVE FAMILY LIFE 


binations or variations of those just mentioned, while 
a large number of peoples require the setting up of a 
separate household, as we do, as soon as a couple is 
married. 

Division of labor between man and wife in a primitive 
family differs in every tribe. It is frequently as illogical 
as our own. Earlier students, through careless obser¬ 
vation and lack of understanding of the tribal culture, 
led us to believe that in more primitive tribes, a natural 
division of labor on a purely physiological basis was ob¬ 
served. In a completely savage tribe, the women were 
supposed to do only the work for which they were best 
fitted physically. This theory has been found to be 
another illusion. The reasons why women do one kind of 
work and men another usually lie in cultural factors rather 
than in a recognition of what each is best able to do. 

The men of a tribe usually do the hunting and fishing, 
though there are several exceptions, while the women 
gather the acorns, roots, and vegetable products which 
are nearly always the staple part of the family’s food. 
Women seem to have been the first agriculturists, and 
even today we find that where die digging-stick or hoe 
has not been supplanted by the plow, agriculture is car¬ 
ried on almost entirely by them. Pulling weeds is usually 
their job, and clearing the land and building fences the 


35 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


men’s. In some tribes, among them the Andaman 
Islanders, the work of the fields and gardens is shared 
by the men and women equally. 

The task of carrying water is nearly always left to 
the women of the tribe, though it is often important and 
arduous. Women usually prepare and cook the food, 
though in some tribes the men help on special occasions. 
Among the Samoans, the young men build the ovens, 
and do most of the heavy work of the cooking, but the 
women always help both in preparing the food for cook¬ 
ing and in cooking it. In tribes where the unmarried 
men live in their own club-houses, they cook all of 
their own food. 

The women always care for the dwelling, and in 
some cases even help in building it. The Pueblo Indian 
women plaster the walls of a house by hand, after the 
men have built the foundations and put up the scaffolding. 
The Sioux and Cheyenne women helped to build the 
teepees. 

Women in all tribes were the first potters, though it 
is curious to find that where the use of the wheel in mak¬ 
ing pottery is known the men have always taken over the 
work. Only where pottery is made by hand is it the 
work of the women in the tribe. 

Clothing and ornaments are made by both men and 


36 



PRIMITIVE FAMILY LIFE 


women in most tribes. Usually each makes his or her 
own belongings. The women of the Trobriand Islands 
make their own grass skirts, and the men their brief gar¬ 
ments. The men also make their ceremonial costumes, 
masks, and ear and arm ornaments, and keep them in 
order and repair. It is rarely the woman’s duty to care 
for her husband’s personal possessions. 

In the American Indian tribes, the women usually 
make and decorate the skin garments for themselves and 
their husbands. Where the making of textiles is known, 
sometimes the women do the weaving and spinning, as 
among the Navaho, while in other tribes such as their 
neighbors, the Hopi Indians, the men weave and spin. 
Ordinarily, spinning is women’s work (whence the word 
spinster for an unmarried woman) and weaving is work 
for the men. 

In pastoral tribes that have learned to domesticate and 
herd animals, the women’s share of the work also varies 
greatly. The Hottentots of South Africa consider men 
and women equal and permit them to do the same work; 
the Bantu, another South African people, consider 
women inferior and restrict their part in the tribal work. 
The women of the Chukchi of Siberia often take care 
of the reindeer herds, and do all of the skinning and 
butchering in addition to the household work. Other 


37 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


cattle peoples will not permit their women to come near 
the animals because they believe the welfare of the cattle 
and the quality of the dairy products will be endangered 
through the evil magic a woman’s presence and contact 
exert. 

Religious beliefs of many tribes account for the par¬ 
ticular types of work women are not permitted to do. 
In such tribes, the physiological characteristics of women 
in connection with child-birth are but vaguely under¬ 
stood. An air of mystery has been created about them 
which has led to many strange rituals, and rules of 
avoidance, called taboos . The people who consider 
women “unclean” and dangerous exclude them from par¬ 
ticipation in many activities. The Todas of India will 
not allow them near the sacred cattle; likewise, the 
Kaffirs of Africa keep them away from the herds. There 
is a wide variety of similar regulations in tribes in every 
part of the world. 

It is on the background of such beliefs and traditions 
of the tribe that woman’s position in it depends. Whether 
her position is that of an equal or an inferior cannot 
be determined by the stage of civilizatiton which the 
tribe has reached, or by her usefulness. Often the most 
primitive tribes consider men and women equal, while 
others, whose culture is more advanced in other respects, 


38 



PRIMITIVE FAMILY LIFE 


regard women as property to be bought and sold accord¬ 
ing to the whim of the men who own them. 

But even in such tribes, women’s lot is not always 
so black as it seems. Although her husband has the 
right to sell her or give her away or lend her to a 
stranger as a gesture of hospitality, he frequently does 
not exercise it. She is often kindly and affectionately 
treated as a wife, and genuinely mourned when she dies. 

Closely cooperative family and social life prevails in 
nearly all primitive groups and has a tremendous effect 
on a husband’s treatment of his wife. The approval 
of the rest of the tribe is of vital importance to its in¬ 
dividual member, and his family life is an open book to 
the whole village. The inhabitants of our small towns 
have much greater privacy. Tribal opinion, which every¬ 
where frowns on force and violence in the domestic circle, 
is a potent check on a man’s behavior. The close family 
relationships in most tribes are another restraining in¬ 
fluence. Australian tribes, where the position of women 
is extremely low, have the habit of exchanging sisters 
in marriage making it possible for a man to say to his 
brother-in-law, “If you beat my sister, I will beat my 
wife, who is your sister.” In tribes like the Zuni Indians, 
where the husband lives with his wife’s mother and sis¬ 
ters, he would think twice before bringing down the wrath 


39 



' 

MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 

of the whole household on his head by mistreating her. 
Though the man is master in his own family, his treat¬ 
ment of his wife, no matter how inferior women may 
be regarded in the tribe, is never completely uncontrolled. 

Where there is a tribal caste system, the problem of 
a woman’s rank after marriage has an infinite number 
of solutions. Among the Samoans, her rank can never 
be higher than her husband’s, even if her family is. 
Alliances of high-caste women with commoners are rather 
infrequent, for few women care to give up their noble 
rank. Among the Trobriand Islanders, on the other 
hand, a high-caste woman retains her rank when she 
marries a commoner, and he must crawl before her in 
public and observe all the other ceremonies due to one 
of higher rank in her presence. 

Nearly everywhere, popular belief to the contrary not¬ 
withstanding, the husband (or husbands, if the tribe is 
polyandrous) has exclusive sexual prerogatives over his 
wife. He expects strict fidelity on her part after mar¬ 
riage, no matter what degree of license was permitted 
her before it. Only in tribes where it is customary to 
lend one’s wife to a visitor is she ever supposed to bestow 
her favor on anyone but her husband. Of course the 
rules of fidelity are covertly disregarded among primitive 
peoples just as they are in our own society, but such con- 


40 



PRIMITIVE FAMILY LIFE 


duct is always illicit and is always regarded with scorn 
and disapproval by the respectable members of the tribe, 
if it becomes known. 

Nearly all investigators who have lived with a primitive 
tribe for any length of time have commented on the 
orderliness of their family life, the mutual friendliness 
and politeness of members of a family to each other, 
and the modesty of their behavior. The people of a sav¬ 
age tribe seem to live up to their customary codes to 
a surprising degree of faithfulness. 

In some tribes the influence and authority of the 
women in the community life outside the home are un¬ 
usually large. This circumstance, together with the fact 
that descent is reckoned in such tribes through the female 
line and property is inherited through the women, for 
a long time led anthropologists to believe that the women 
also controlled the tribal government and councils. Such 
communities, in which the women were supposed to be 
the rulers, were called matriarchates. The best-known 
people who were thought to live under such a system were 
the Iroquois Indians. Among them, the matrons of the 
tribe elected the men who sat in the tribal councils, and 
could depose them. Furthermore, the tribal chieftain¬ 
ship was hereditary in the maternal line. But the women 
themselves were never members of the councils. 


41 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


The Ashanti in Africa, where the queen-mother has 
the most to say in choice of a new chief when the old 
one dies, were thought to be another such tribe. Here 
again, no woman was ever chosen chief. On the other 
hand, the Zuni Indians, who also reckon descent in the 
female line and inherit property through the mother, 
permit their women to play only a small part in the 
community life. The series of ceremonials associated 
with it are almost entirely in the hands of the men. 

Closer examination of all the tribes where the matriar- 
chate was believed to exist has shown that while the 
women have unusual powers and influence, according 
to our ideas, in none of them have they ever exercised 
complete control over the community life. Their opinion 
on matters concerning the tribal welfare is highly re¬ 
spected in many tribes, but the matriarchate, in its strict 
meaning of a tribe ruled by the women alone, does not 
and never did exist. Women’s influence is sometimes 
powerful, but they are never the sole rulers, even in primi¬ 
tive tribes. 

Property rights among tribal folk constitute another 
interesting field of study. The kinds of property that 
may be owned by the individual members of the family, 
or by the family as a whole, are always intricately inter¬ 
woven with the entire economic and social structure of 


42 



PRIMITIVE FAMILY LIFE 


a particular people. Every tribe has its own concep¬ 
tions of property rights. What the family owns, what 
the wife and husband own, or what the children own, 
and what each may inherit from the others are clearly 
defined and jealously observed. 

The right of women to own property is nowhere denied, 
even though their position is that of inferiors, or where 
they are even regarded as property themselves. The 
property-rights of children are everywhere as strictly re¬ 
spected as those of adults. This feature of primitive life 
frequently astonishes travelers. When they try to buy 
a savage child’s toy, which is often a miniature repro¬ 
duction of something used by the adults of the tribe, to 
exhibit in our museums, they find that the child-owner is 
always consulted. If he refuses to sell or give away his 
toy, his parents make no effort to coax or force him to 
part with it. The traveler has to go empty-handed, no 
matter what payment he has offered, if the little owner 
is adamant. 

It was once thought that tribal folk did not recognize 
the right of individuals to hold private property at all, 
but owned everything in common. Community owner¬ 
ship, or ownership of property by groups, had been ob¬ 
served in many tribes, and the erroneous conclusion arose 
that everything was owned in that manner. We know 


43 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


now that private property is recognized by primitive 
peoples everywhere, though many have some variety of 
community ownership as well. The principles of justice 
and fine discrimination in the rights of individuals that 
lie at the foundation of the various systems of property 
ownership among primitive peoples are often a cause 
for marvel by a civilized man. There is private property 
in land, in movable objects, and in such intangibles as 
songs, magical formulas, and legends. The Plains In¬ 
dians of North America even looked upon visions as pri¬ 
vate property. In some Melanesian tribes, people may 
own fruit trees that grow on someone else’s land. 

Most primitive peoples recognize two principle ways 
of acquiring property. Certain kinds of things are owned 
by virtue of one’s membership in a tribe or clan or family. 
To other kinds one gets a claim by contributing one’s 
labor. 

Where there is a caste system, as in Polynesia, the 
noblemen may hold land by right of conquest or in¬ 
heritance, and the serfs or slaves can never own it or 
even hold it in fief. In some African tribes which have 
a strong monarchial form of government, the king or 
chief owns all the land, and members of the tribe hold 
it in fief from him, just as was the case in feudal Europe. 
The holder of the fief, who cultivates it, is always entitled 


44 



PRIMITIVE FAMILY LIFE 


to the crops. This right is unquestioned even if the holder 
is a woman, though in such tribes women themselves are 
regarded as property. 

In most North American Indian tribes, the community 
organization was along somewhat democratic lines. 
There were a few exceptions, such as the Kwakiutl of Van¬ 
couver Island and the Natchez of Mississippi, both of 
whom had strong hereditary castes of nobles, commoners, 
and slaves, and drew a sharp line between the rich and 
the poor. But as a rule, land was held in common by 
the tribe or clan. Individuals had a right to plots of 
land only for cultivation. A man held his plot for use. 
If he did not cultivate it, it reverted to the tribe, to be 
reassigned to someone who would. 

Hunting and fishing territories were often owned in a 
similar manner. The products of the hunt or fishing 
expedition were divided among those participating in it. 
Plains Indians organized the entire tribe for a buffalo 
hunt, and during it the members were subject to almost 
military discipline to assure success. The welfare of the 
whole tribe was involved in the undertaking, and the kill 
was divided equally among the members. A tribe con¬ 
sidered itself owner of all the extensive area which the 
hunt covered. 

Land that was not owned communally in most Amer- 


45 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


can Indian tribes was owned by families or clans. In 
some tribes such as the Hopi and the Zuni, both the own¬ 
ership of land and its inheritance are vested in the women. 
Descent is reckoned through the mother, and the house 
or pueblo in which the family lives is hers, and is inherited 
by her daughters. The men are completely excluded from 
ownership of either houses or fields, and pass their lives 
as guests in the homes of their wives or mothers. 

As a rule primitive peoples do not accumulate property 
or hoard wealth as we do, for their culture pattern has 
no use for amassed capital and offers no incentive to 
its acquisition. Often the only prestige attached to 
wealth lies in giving it away in feasts and display. The 
richest man in a village is usually chief, as among the 
Trobriand Islanders, but his chieftainship is largely de¬ 
pendent on the feasts and entertainments he gives. In 
some Eskimo tribes the most prominent man is the one 
who is most generous, who shares most fully what he has. 
In American Indian tribes, the lavish giving away of 
horses and blankets was expected of a successful chief. 

Men of some Melanesian tribes sometimes try to ac¬ 
cumulate property in order to give feasts in honor of 
their dead, and thus insure to themselves the power the 
spirits can bestow on their living descendants. 

Property in such things as land and dwelling places is 


46 



PRIMITIVE FAMILY LIFE 


rarely inherited from a husband by his wife, or vice versa, 
for its ownership is usually a family affair. A man or 
a woman has a right to it on marriage only by virtue of 
membership in the family which owns it. When the 
marriage is dissolved by death, there can be no transfer 
of such property, which continues in the family according 
to the tribal codes. 

Personal belongings, such as tools, weapons, pottery, 
blankets, clothing, ornaments, and ceremonial masks or 
costumes, are about the only kind of property a savage 
can dispose of as he wishes. The customs of some tribes 
even require that these things be buried with the owner 
or burned at his death. The problem of who inherits 
them is then automatically settled. In any event, a man’s 
personal property would be of little use to his wife or 
hers to him. Some kinds of possessions occasionally go 
to a nephew or niece. The family contract, which a 
marriage is in most tribes, leaves the husband or wife pri¬ 
marily a member of his or her own family in matters of 
inheritance. They inherit property only from the family 
to which they belong by blood, almost never from each 
other. 

The family itself in primitive tribes is often a much 
broader and looser group than it is in our own society. 
Family relationships are much different. We are ac- 


47 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


customed to think of a family as the biologic unit of 
mother, father, and children, with an occasional mother- 
in-law or grandfather, making a small, exclusive group 
living in a separate household. The primitive family 
often consists of a much larger group of persons, related 
by both blood and marriage, all living together in a single 
residence. It may, on the other hand, present the opposite 
extreme of almost no family life at all, as in the Melane¬ 
sian tribes where the husband only eats at home and 
visits his wife at night. 

A household like that of the Zuni Indians, which con¬ 
sists of the mother and her husband, all the daughters 
with their husbands and children, and the unmarried, 
divorced, or widowed sons, is not uncommon. Samoan 
tribes have an even looser family group. They reckon 
descent through the father, and the sons bring their 
wives to live in his house. The grandchildren grow up 
there; and, in addition, the children of other relatives 
frequently come to stay in the household. A Samoan 
child may really choose his home. If he is unhappy with 
his own parents because of some uncongenial restraint 
or some resentment toward them or other adults in their 
household, he simply goes away to live in the home of 
other relatives. He is always made welcome anywhere 
he goes and may stay as long as he pleases. 


48 



PRIMITIVE FAMILY LIFE 


Such flexible residence arrangements throw together in 
the close association of daily living a heterogeneous group 
of people, some blood relations of various degrees, others 
that are related only by marriage. Consequently, the 
tribal conventions usually regulate very strictly the be¬ 
havior of the various members of the kinship group 
toward each other. Rules of avoidance, or taboos, must be 
observed between certain persons in the family. Other 
members may be on most familiar terms. Often a son-in- 
law must never speak to his mother-in-law, or a father-in- 
law to his daughter-in-law, and neither may use the other’s 
name in speaking of him or her. A Navaho Indian man 
must never be in the room with his mother-in-law. In 
some African tribes he even sends a messenger to the 
village where his mother-in-law lives to warn her of an 
impending visit, thus preventing a chance meeting. 

Frequently an elder brother or a male cousin may not 
speak to the wife of a younger brother or cousin, or they 
may do so only through an intermediary. Sometimes 
an elder brother may not speak to the wife of a younger 
sister’s son. In some tribes, brother and sister may not 
speak to each other directly, but only through a third 
person; or blood brothers may not talk together freely, 
but must confine themselves to formal speech and im¬ 
personal topics. Elsewhere, a father must not eat with 


49 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


his son, and brother and sister must never look at one 
another. In some tribes a husband may call his wife 
by name, but she may not speak his. The regulations 
even extend to the subjects one may discuss in the presence 
of a person one must avoid because of taboos. 

Such taboos usually apply between those in a house¬ 
hold who can never, under any circumstances, be pro¬ 
spective mates according to the tribal rules. They are 
apparently part of the tribe’s precautions against the 
faintest shadow of incestuous relationships. They make 
daily life in the family extraordinarily complicated, until 
it would seem to us that no one person could remember 
all the minute regulations that surround his every waking 
moment. But violation of any of them, even inadvert¬ 
ently, is a serious breach of conduct that will bring down 
the contempt of the whole village on the unlucky offend¬ 
er’s head. 

In marked contrast to this rigidly prescribed behavior 
is the great familiarity that is permitted between other 
members of the family group. People of certain degrees 
of relationship, even of opposite sex, exercise a freedom 
of speech and of person that far exceeds what we should 
consider good taste. The liberties common between the 
men and women of a kin group who are possible mates 
under tribal code are frequently as extreme as the taboo. A 


50 



PRIMITIVE FAMILY LIFE 


man who must behave circumspectly with his mother-in- 
law or his sister, may converse freely, on subjects that 
would cause a blush to rise to our cheeks, with his wife’s 
younger sister or his brother’s wife, where the levirate or 
sororate is customary. 

All these regulations of behavior and customs of resi¬ 
dence give the married relationship and the family life 
of a tribal couple a different character from that of ours. 
Where a man does not live in the same house with his 
wife, or a brother and sister may not speak to one an¬ 
other, the relationships between the members of a family 
obviously cannot be the close-knit emotional ties custom¬ 
ary in our own life. A family becomes a large social 
group, including many persons bound together by more 
or less remote ties of kindred. Naturally, therefore, its 
personal and affectionate aspects will be different. 

Since marriage is so largely a family contract and 
alliance, divorce in primitive communities has the same 
character. It is possible in every tribe, and it is relatively 
simple compared with our legal procedure, but the ease 
or difficulty of dissolving a marriage is influenced by the 
terms of the marriage agreement in the particular tribe. 

A primitive marriage means primarily the founding 
of a family; so sterility is everywhere recognized as a 
cause for divorce. If there are children, the question of 


51 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


their support or of the support of the mother does not 
complicate matters, as they do with us. A woman is 
always welcome at her own family’s home if she has 
been deprived of her husband, and tribal custom nearly 
always decrees to which family the children belong even 
when divorce does not take place. 

In many tribes, the woman is never dependent on her 
husband, and a divorce makes no disrupting change what¬ 
ever. Among the Trobriand Islanders, as well as many 
other tribes, a woman is always supported by her father 
and brothers, and her husband’s work is to support his 
sisters. Among the Hopi and Zuni Indians, where the 
women own the houses and fields, divorce is a simple 
matter. A woman who decides that her married life is 
no longer desirable has only to indicate that fact to her 
husband. If a Hopi woman fails to thank her husband 
when he returns from his labor in the fields, he under¬ 
stands that his work for her is no longer appreciated. 
He has no choice but to go home to his mother. A 
Zuni man may come home to find some of his personal 
belongings greeting him at the door. This is his wife’s 
tactful way of telling him that she is tired of living 
with him. He returns to the home of his mother and 
sisters, where he is always welcome. In both tribes, the 
children belong to the wife’s family; since descent is 


52 



PRIMITIVE FAMILY LIFE 


through the female line, and they remain with her. In 
Samoa, where children are always welcome at the homes 
of relatives anyway, the separation of its parents gives 
a child two homes instead of one. 

Where a heavy bride-price has been paid by the mem¬ 
bers of the husband’s family, which must be returned 
to them in case of divorce, the matter is more difficult. 
The families will try to preserve the marriage, and divorces 
are rather infrequent. Among the Shasta Indians of 
the northwest coast, where purchase is customary, a 
woman can leave her husband after she has had three 
or four children, for she is then considered to have at 
least equalled the investment of her bride-price. Other 
tribes where the bride is purchased have similar arrange¬ 
ments. Even where divorce is discouraged, however, a 
woman is never compelled to live with a man she dislikes 
or who mistreats her. As we have seen, primitive people 
universally frown on the use of force in domestic rela¬ 
tionships, and no woman is required to submit to it. 
Divorce merely consists in the injured person’s taking his 
or her possessions and returning to his or her own family. 

X 


S3 



FOUR 


WHEN A CHILD IS BORN 

T HE birth of a child to a tribal couple is always an 
important event in which the whole community is 
deeply interested. Birth and death alike make a great 
impression on the primitive mind, and both are met with 
elaborate ceremonial display. This is especially true of 
birth, which is surrounded with all sorts of complicated 
taboos and regulations to safeguard the new life from evil. 

Not all peoples understand the physiological relation¬ 
ship between the father and the new child. Some believe 
that women conceive through some supernatural power, 
and the father is merely the husband of the woman who 
bears the child. But he has much the same sentiment 
toward the new-born child, in spite of this naive belief, 
and performs much the same duties that a father does 
in our own society. 

The Trobriand Islanders seem to have the belief that 
through some supernatural force concealed in a tree or 
a rock, a woman becomes aware that she is to have a 


54 



WHEN A CHILD IS BORN 


child. No amount of persuasion on the part of white 
visitors can convince them that a husband or any other 
man has anything to do with its conception. A man 
who has been away from his wife for two or three 
years on a trading expedition and comes home to find 
her with a new baby will refuse to be convinced that she 
has been unfaithful during his absence. An unmarried 
woman should not have children, in fact it is disgraceful 
for her to do so, but only because she has no husband 
to help her rear them. 

Some Australian tribes have similar beliefs in the 
potency of trees, rocks, and other inanimate objects. The 
Arunta believe in a kind of reincarnation; the spirits of 
the dead inhabit certain places and a woman frequenting 
such a place runs the risk of becoming pregnant. 

The Eskimos and some Siberian tribes also think that 
a new child is the reincarnation of some ancestor. The 
Koryak of Siberia even hold a divination ceremony to 
discover which ancestor has entered the soul of the baby, 
and name it accordingly. The Aztecs of Mexico also 
believed that an ancestral spirit was reborn in the child. 

Everywhere the child receives important consideration. 
Its coming is prepared for with many precautions and 
by the observance of many taboos. Some Australian 
tribes, the Trobriand Islanders, and others, elaborately 


55 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


recognize a woman’s first pregnancy with a special series 
of rituals. Among the Trobrianders, her feet must not 
touch the ground; so she is carried from place to place 
and a mat laid for her to stand on. After a purifying 
bath, which is given her by the women of the tribe, she 
wears a white fiber robe to whiten her skin and keep the 
sun’s rays from her body. She sits on a platform built 
in front of her hut during certain hours of the day, from 
three to five days, depending on her rank. Such adver¬ 
tising of a fact civilized women try to conceal as long 
as possible seems strange to us, but a Trobriand woman 
is proud when she becomes pregnant for the first time 
and wants the whole village to know about it. 

An Aztec woman informed her family as soon as she 
discovered that she was to have her first child. They 
immediately gave a great feast to the entire village to 
celebrate the event. Gifts were exchanged, orations an¬ 
nouncing the news, and prayers asking the blessing of 
the gods on the new being were made by everyone present, 
including the prospective mother herself. Another feast 
was held just before the child was bom, at which the mid¬ 
wife made the principal address. 

Besides the ceremonies that take place before the ar¬ 
rival of the first child, there are taboos and rules of con¬ 
duct that have to be observed by both husband and wife 


56 



WHEN A CHILD IS BORN 


whenever a child is on the way. Their diet is nearly always 
rigidly regulated, especially the woman’s. A woman of 
the Torres Straits, where the tribes are dependent chiefly 
on turtles for food, is forbidden to eat them or even to 
enter a house where they are being cooked, for her in¬ 
fluence is thought to be unwholesome and dangerous. 
In the Trobriand Islands, a pregnant woman cannot 
eat certain kinds of fish, especially shell-fish. A Mohave 
woman never eats rabbit at this time, because of the 
belief that it will cause the child to have sores on its 
head. Judging from the number of children who have 
sores on their heads, there must be considerable disregard 
of this rule. In some tribes the husband refrains from 
hunting and killing certain animals for fear that his 
doing so might injure the child. In others he cannot 
do any heavy work during the last months because his 
exertions might hinder the process of child-bearing. 

In many cases the pregnant woman no longer lives 
in the same dwelling as her husband, nor sleeps with 
him. She often goes home to her own family to stay 
during this period. In tribes where marriage must be 
outside the clan and the wife has left her native village 
for her husband’s, it is often customary for her to re¬ 
turn to her own home to give birth to the child. 

Sometimes the separation of husband and wife lasts 


57 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


long after the child is bom. Kaffir couples do not live 
together until the child is weaned, and this is not until 
the child is three or four years old. Cheyenne Indian 
parents often did not have a second child until the first 
was ten years old, when they publicly announced that 
their child was going to have a sister or a brother. This 
type of self-control was considered praiseworthy by the 
tribe. 

The custom of primitive mothers nursing their children 
for four or five years sometimes means prolonged con¬ 
tinence for the husbands. Since it is often found with 
the practice of polygyny, where a man can simply turn 
to his other wives if custom requires that he must live 
apart from a woman until her child is weaned. 

When the actual birth takes place, many tribes ac¬ 
cord it ceremonial attention. On the other hand, some 
tribes allow the woman to retire into the bush alone and 
return later with the new-born child. Where there are 
ceremonies, the woman is generally expected to bear the 
ordeal with fortitude; any outcry is considered a disgrace. 
Usually either a special lying-in-hut is built for the ex¬ 
pectant mother by her female relatives, or she retires into 
the bush accompanied by some of them or by a midwife. 
In Samoa, a birth takes place almost publicly. Anyone 
who is interested may be present, even children. 


58 



WHEN A CHILD IS BORN 


An Australian woman retires with a female relative 
into the bush, and returns carrying the child over her 
shoulder in an opposum skin or a mat. In Fiji, a 
professional midwife attends the woman in a hut erected 
for the event. Afterwards the hut is burned. An expect¬ 
ant mother among the Todas of India is isolated with 
her mother in a special hut several months before the 
child’s birth actually takes place, so that she will not be 
near the sacred cattle which her “uncleanness” might 
injure. The central Eskimos also have a seclusion hut, 
of skins in summer and of ice in winter. The women 
of the Vedda of Ceylon retire into a cave; anyone may 
assist at the birth, for there are no professional midwives 
in the tribe. A Yao woman in Africa goes into the bush 
a few days before the child’s birth, and builds a grass 
hut in which it is born. She is accompanied by a midwife 
who stays with her for five or six days, when they return 
to the village. Kaffir women also are secluded and 
attended by midwives. 

Many of the practices and ceremonials intended to aid 
the mother and child are from our point of view both 
harmful and revolting. There is often ignorance of the 
progress of labor, and dangerous methods of forcing the 
birth are sometimes resorted to. If the birth is delayed, 
the female attendants perform magic rites such as loosen- 


59 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


ing their clothing, untying knots, and similar futile acts. 
Among the Melanesian tribes of British New Guinea, 
the father is sent for in a case of prolonged labor to 
perform such helpful acts as opening boxes, untying his 
hair, and removing tight bracelets from his arms. They 
believe that by acts of this kind, which are a type of 
sympathetic magic, the obstacles to the child’s delivery 
will be removed. If none of these remedies work, the 
woman simply dies. 

The taboos on the father’s and mother’s conduct often 
continue for some time after the child’s birth. As we 
have pointed out, the taboo of continence often lasts for 
years. Food taboos also continue for varying lengths 
of time, from a week in some tribes to a year in others. 
In the Banks Islands, a father must not work for a month 
after the child’s birth. A Fiji father will not do any 
hard labor, such as lifting heavy weights or paddling a 
canoe, for some time. Some Melanesian mothers are 
restricted to a diet of boiled taro and the fruit of certain 
trees, for a month. If it is the first child, the father is 
not allowed to touch it until it is from five to eight 
months old. A central Eskimo mother must not eat 
raw flesh for a year, nor the flesh of any animal that has 
been shot through the heart. Any violations of the food 
taboos are thought to cause illness for the child. 


60 



WHEN A CHILD IS BORN 


In nearly all tribes both mother and child have to 
undergo some sort of purification rites. Sometimes the 
father, too, has to perform magic rites to ward off evil. 
In a few cases, the mother gets up and goes about her 
work almost at once, but the father goes to bed for a 
week or so. This custom, which is not yet perfectly 
understood, is followed among the Basques in Spain, a 
far from primitive people, as well as in certain tribes in 
Brazil and Borneo. It is called the courade. The belief 
back of it, so far as investigators have been able to 
discover, seems to be that the father’s behavior exercises 
some kind of sympathetic influence on the new-born 
child. He goes to bed to avoid doing anything that will 
harm it. 

The new mother is usually bathed or treated with 
incense to purify her before she returns to the family 
circle. Sometimes she is steamed, or toasted over a small 
fire for a short time. In other tribes the rites consist of 
elaborate cleansing baths. The Yukaghir of Siberia both 
bathe and steam her four days after the child’s birth. The 
woman may return to her household duties, but she must 
not touch any hunting or fishing implements or sleep 
with her husband for forty days. 

Among other peoples, she either goes back to work 
and to her family almost immediately or she may have 


61 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


a short period of rest, varying from a few days to several 
months. A Fiji woman’s rest depends on her social 
position. The better class women take a month; in the 
families of chiefs, they do no domestic work for three 
months. Here, as everywhere else, including our own 
society, the low-class woman returns to her work as soon 
as she is able. In many cases the new-born child also 
receives treatment that seems revolting and stupid to 
civilized people. In some tribes it is wonderful that 
any babies survive. It is surely a case of “the survival 
of the fittest” when they do. Some give the child a 
cold bath a few hours after it is bom. Others feed it 
ground food while its mother is being purified; then it 
can have its mother’s milk—if it has lived. In Melanesia, 
it is even given ground shell; in Fiji, some kind of 
medicine to make it vomit so that it will start life with 
a clean stomach. 

In many tribes, the mother must not feed her baby her 
own milk for several days after it is bom. The child 
may either go without food entirely for this period, or it 
may be nursed by a female relative of the young mother. 
The Fijians give an infant to a wet nurse while its mother 
is being cleansed. 

Some peoples pass a new baby through smoke or fire 
to ward off evil spirits; others hang strings around its 


62 



WHEN A CHILD IS BORN 


neck to accomplish the same purpose. In Samoa a child 
is fed for three days on the juice of cocoanut kernels. 

The North American Indians contented themselves 
with wrapping the baby in the inner bark of cedar and 
putting it in a cradle on its mother’s back. The Amazon¬ 
ian Indians’ treatment is doubtless a great strain on the 
new-born infant. They submerge it immediately in a 
stream. A Kaffir baby is smoked in special medicines 
on the first day to impart to it the ancestral spirit. 

In contrast to these strenuous and weird customs, the 
Chukchi of Siberia take excellent care of their infants. 
In some way they have even hit upon the perfect treatment 
for a prematurely-born baby. They place it in the soft 
skin of a sea-bird which has been taken off whole and 
turned feather side in, tie it up securely, and hang it over 
a lamp in which a small flame is kept burning. 

In many tribes, all over the world, an attempt is made 
to mold the child’s body from the beginning into certain 
tribal ideals of beauty. One of the most common is the 
flattening of the baby’s head by means of boards fastened 
on in ways that will force it into the desired shape. The 
Aztecs followed this practice and the Chinook do it to 
their babies. Among the Salish Indians of the north¬ 
west coast, such flattening is a mark of distinction. 
Slaves are not allowed to practice it on their children. 


63 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


The Arunta in Australia flatten their children’s noses 
to make them, as they think, beautiful, and they pierce 
the septum of the nose for ornaments. 

The arrival of a child is often the occasion for some 
sort of religious ceremonial. In parts of western Africa 
a public crier announces the fact that a child is bom and 
claims for it a place in the community. The people of 
the village gather, and the head man of the town sprinkles 
water over the new baby, followed by everyone present. 
The poor child is thoroughly drenched before the cere¬ 
mony is over. The Thonga of South Africa dedicate 
the child to the first new moon, to keep it from being 
stupid. Their neighbors, the Baganda, do the same to 
insure it wealth and good fortune. The Pawnee Indians 
dedicated their children to the morning star. 

When a Toda baby is three months old, its father 
sees it for the first time. If it is a boy, he takes it early 
in the morning to the sacred dairy. At the place where 
the sacred buffalo are standing, he uncovers the baby’s 
face and directs its gaze toward the rising sun. If the 
child is a girl, its mother takes it to the place where the 
women receive the buttermilk from the dairy, and there 
uncovers its face. The Toda women, as we have noticed, 
are never permitted near the sacred cattle; but the mother 
takes her girl baby as near them as the custom allows. 


64 



WHEN A CHILD IS BORN 


Omaha Indians had most unusual and impressive 
ceremonies for their new babies. The child was intro¬ 
duced to the universe and to the common life-giving 
power which they believed pervaded all things, animate 
and inanimate. Its arrival was formally announced eight 
days after birth in a ceremonial presided over by a special 
priest, who implored the forces and forms of nature to 
make its path smooth as it traveled over the rugged 
journey of life. He appealed to the sun, the moon, the 
stars, the winds, the clouds, the rains, the thunder and 
lightning, the hills and rivers, birds and animals. The 
whole ceremonial seems to have been an attempt on the 
part of the tribe to insure for their children the friendly 
attitude of all things in the universe with which the child 
might have contacts during its life. When it was three 
or four years old, it was formally introduced into the 
tribe. Its baby name was thrown away and it was given 
a new name establishing its membership in the clan and 
ritual group to which it belonged. It was also presented 
with a new pair of moccasins in which to take the first 
steps as a tribal member. 

Primitive peoples are extremely fond of children. To 
be sure, superfluous babies may be eliminated by infanti¬ 
cide, as we shall see later, but no tribe is known in which 
children are not welcome, and where they are not treated, 


65 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


as a rule, with the utmost kindness and affection. Parents 
are usually indulgent and rarely punish them as we do. 
Japanese tribes consider the absence of children a form 
of divine punishment, and most people have little use 
for a barren woman. 

The Tasmanians, the lowliest people known, now 
unhappily extinct, were fond of their children. In many 
tribes the little ones are given the best of everything. 
Koryak children are attended to first at meals, and given 
the choicest bits of food. Vedda children receive the 
best food and shelter the tribe can provide. Primitive 
mothers are passionately fond of their children and 
fathers no less so, whether they are the man’s own or 
those of another. 

With all this love of children, why do certain tribes 
kill some of them at birth? Sometimes they are a sacrifice 
to the gods. More often the reason is grim necessity. 
In the Eskimo country, food may become so scarce that 
a number of new-born children must be put out of the 
way—usually girls, because the hunting of food falls to 
the men. Among nomadic peoples, a season of drought 
and a forced migration may make the same thing 
necessary. Sometimes the young children, too, have to 
be left behind on the march because they cannot keep 
up with the rest. In a few tribes infanticide hangs on 


66 



WHEN A CHILD IS BORN 


after the economic necessity for it has vanished. Nearly 
always it has its origin in some food shortage of the past. 

The elimination of twin babies has a different back¬ 
ground. Being out of the ordinary, they are either 
hailed as a mark of favor from the gods, or feared as 
ominous. Some tribes put one or both of a pair to death; 
for it is believed that they are a sign of unchastity in their 
mother or a warning of calamity. On the other hand, 
there are tribes that welcome twins, and think they must 
be treated with special care and consideration. They 
believe twins are sent only to a good woman who has 
been selected for the honor because she will be a fine 
mother. The Thonga of South Africa abhor twins, and 
the Baganda, their neighbors, love them. The Todas of 
India kill one twin if both are boys, and both if they 
are girls. 

In most tribes male babies are most highly prized, 
though in tribes like the Akikuyu, where girls bring a 
bride-price of thirty goats, they are esteemed as a great 
blessing. In the Banks Islands, the female baby is 
preserved in preference to the male. Here the inheritance 
is in the female line, and girls bring a high bride-price; 
so the preference is a natural one. 

The child’s real name, among tribal folk, is usually 
considered an inseparable part of its personality. It is 


67 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


sacred; it is never used in calling the child or in speaking 
to or of it. This intimate name is a secret known only to 
the closest relatives; if others knew it, evil spirits might 
discover it and use the name to work evil magic on the 
child. Questions by a white man as to a tribesman’s 
personal name are often met with shocked silence; asking 
such a question is a grave social error. Census-takers 
among the American Indians in former days had to 
devise other methods than by listing the Redskins’ real 
names, because they could never get any response to 
their questions on this point. 

Many other names are given during an individual’s 
lifetime, at the various stages of his participation in the 
tribal rites. For instance, he receives a new name when 
he is initiated into the tribe, or when he joins certain 
secret societies. Perhaps he gets another one when his 
first child is born, or even when he gets to be forty or 
forty-five years old. 

Besides all these ceremonial names, a child is often 
given a name for use, or a nick-name. It may be associated 
with some trivial thing, such as the first object that the 
father sees after the child’s birth, or the day of the 
month or time of day. Nick-names are sometimes given, 
like our own, in ridicule of something the child does 
when little. One Mohave boy was called “lemons,” 


68 



WHEN A CHILD IS BORN 


because, as his mother explained, “everybody likes 
lemons”; another was called a name meaning, “Can’t 
keep his trousers up,” because when he was small he had 
that difficulty. 

Intimate names, which must not be revealed, are usually 
given with some ceremony, sometimes not until the child 
is several years old. They are not given a Kurnai boy 
of Australia until the initiation ceremonies. In Melanesia, 
the ceremonial name is given by the father’s elder brother, 
or occasionally by the paternal grandfather or grand¬ 
mother. In Borneo, a name is often selected for its 
unpleasant sound or meaning so that evil spirits will not 
like to use it. Some Eskimo tribes name the child before 
birth. The name is selected by a female friend or relative, 
who puts her hand on the mother’s stomach and decides 
what the infant is to be called. The Yukaghir of Siberia 
give their children names which they think will bring 
them prosperity. A Koryak father divines what ancestral 
spirit has descended to the child, and names it accordingly. 
The Tlinkits of Alaska named the child for an ancestor 
on the mother’s side, soon after birth, and later at a great 
feast gave it a name from the father’s family. In many 
tribes all over the world, it is customary to address the 
father and mother of a child, as well as the close kin, by 
new titles after the birth of the first child. A man will 


69 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


then be referred to by a term meaning “father of the 
cjiild”; the mother, as “mother of the child.” The Zuni 
and Hopi Indians are among those who follow this 
practice. Among them, a man’s relationship to the 
various members of his wife’s family, with whom he has 
gone to live, is emphasized by the names indicating it 
through the child. 

When the name is given, some tribes also give the 
child certain property, such as a head of cattle or a 
fruit tree. The Banyonkola of East Africa give a child 
two head of cattle. Among the Bori, a goat or a ewe 
lamb is set apart for it. The Koryak give to each new¬ 
born child one reindeer heifer. Such an arrangement is 
meant to provide for the child’s future. By the time it 
is grown and ready to marry, it may have a fair sized 
herd of its own. In the Solomon Islands, a cocoanut 
palm is planted when a child is bom, and only the child 
may sell its fruit. The Omaha give their children ponies 
and colts. Primitive parents never give away or sell the 
children’s property without their consent. 

Children whose parents have died are rarely left long 
as orphans in these communities. Adoption is frequent, 
for someone is always glad to take a child who has lost 
its parents. Women with no children of their own often 
adopt those of relatives who already have large families. 


70 



WHEN A CHILD IS BORN 


They thus avoid the disfavor usually felt by a barren 
woman. In some New Guinea tribes people who never 
had children of their own, or whose children have died, 
often adopt a child of a living relative who has several. 
It seems to be the courteous thing on the part of the 
parents to consent to such adoption. 

In many tribes children captured in war raids were 
adopted. The Omaha Indians had an elaborate rite by 
which a young boy who was a captive of the tribe might 
be adopted into it. He thereafter shared all the rights 
and privileges of the tribe. 

Sometimes adoption is accompanied by elaborate 
ceremonials, as in certain Borneo tribes in which they 
imitate the taboos and rituals of actual pregnancy and 
birth. The mother goes through all the purifying rites 
and is treated exactly as though she were bearing the 
child herself. 

Some peoples carry adoption to an extreme. Blood 
relationships in a family practically cease to exist. Where 
the culture-pattern of the tribe prescribes that a man 
and wife shall adopt the children of others, and their 
own children shall in turn be adopted by some other 
family, no child lives with his real father and mother. 
The family then is not a biological unit, for it consists 
of father, mother, and some one else’s children. It is 


71 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


only a social or cultural unit. Nevertheless, the affection 
between members of such a family is apparently just as 
great as in a natural one, and the parents treat the 
adopted children exactly as if they were their own. An 
adopted son receives his father’s clan name where descent 
is reckoned in the male line, just as a blood son would, 
and he inherits the same rights and privileges. The 
Todas of India and the Thonga of South Africa, and 
the people of Murray v Island in the eastern Torres 
Straights are the best known tribes who practice strange 
modes of adoption. 

Again, in tribal life the small family consisting of 
father, mother, and children is intricately associated with 
the larger kinship group known as the clan (or sib). 
All the individuals in a tribe who reckon their descent 
from a common ancestor, male or female, constitute a 
clan. Some tribes reckon this descent in the male line; 
others reckon it in the female line. A child soon learns 
to which clan he belongs and who are his relatives on 
both the maternal and the paternal side. If descent is 
reckoned in the maternal line, he finds that authority 
over him lies in his mother’s brother, rather than in his 
father. He will inherit from his uncle, while his father’s 
property and rank will go to a cousin, who is his father’s 
nephew through a sister. In such tribes, a daughter 


72 



WHEN A CHILD IS BORN 


cannot be married without her uncle’s consent and the 
greater portion of the bride-price goes to him. But 
usually, as in the Trobriand Islands, where such a plan 
is followed, the brothers, not the husband, support a 
woman and her children. Her husband is busy support¬ 
ing his own married sisters and their families; so the 
arrangement is not as unfair as it seems, however illogical 
it may appear to us. Yet, it does lead to some compli¬ 
cations. The father’s duty is toward his nephews; his 
property goes to them, and he is supposed to look after 
their interests. But it is only natural that his sentiments 
should be more strongly attached to his wife’s children 
and his own, with whom he has lived since their infancy. 
His inclination thus leads him to favor his wife’s children 
whenever their interests are contrary to his nephews’, and 
so to neglect his duties to the latter. Serious trouble 
has been known to arise in such a family situation among 
the Trobrianders, as well as among the Tsimshian of 
British Columbia, whose practice is similar. The only 
solution of the dilemma is for the man’s son to marry 
his cousin; that is, his father’s sister’s daughter. Then 
the man’s nephews, who receive his property, support his 
son, and all is well. This is one reason why cross-cousin 
marriages are regarded so favorably by such peoples. 

Besides this system of inheritance from uncle to 


73 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


nephew, there are many other complex arrangements for 
the handing on of property among persons related through 
a clan. Among the Thonga of South Africa, a man’s 
eldest son does not inherit from his father unless the 
latter has no brother living. As a rule, inheritance is 
from brother to next younger brother. This was true 
also among the Aztecs of Tenochtitlan. 

Some tribes, like the Bushmen, destroy all a man’s 
possessions when he dies because they believe that the 
spirit of the dead man will have some need or use for 
them and will resent their appropriation by others. Such 
destructive wastefulness has greatly impeded the economic 
progress of the tribe. 

The Bantu and other peoples follow a plan similar 
to the English rule of primogeniture, under which the 
eldest son inherits all the property, and the rest nothing. 
However, this type of inheritance is somewhat rare. In 
other East African tribes the eldest son inherits the 
prestige of being head of the family; but within it the 
property is considered to belong to all its members, and 
its use is enjoyed jointly. Even illegitimate children share 
in the inheritance. 

The Vedda of Ceylon distribute property evenly 
among all the children, but the daughters’ shares are 
given to their husbands. When a number of wives and 


74 



WHEN A CHILD IS BORN 


their offspring are to be considered, one of the wives is 
usually first in rank and her son first in inheritance. 
Among the Masai of East Africa, the eldest son of the 
principal wife inherits the largest share of his father’s 
property. He also controls the girls of the family. The 
other sons receive the right to the herds which had been 
assigned to their mothers. 

Among the Kaffir, two wives rank above the others. 
The son of one woman gets his father’s rank and all 
the property except that which has been set aside 
especially for the son of the second woman. Daughters 
and sons of any other wives inherit nothing. 

Sometimes it actually happens that the youngest child 
becomes the principal heir. Among the Naga of Mani¬ 
pur, the Badaga, who are neighbors of the Todas, the 
Kirghiz, and the Yukaghir, the youngest son remains 
with his parents and supports them. In return he receives 
their home and possessions. Among the Khasi, the 
youngest daughter, who performs the family rituals in 
propitiation of the ancestors, inherits the home and its 
contents. 

Often children inherit rights and obligations and other 
intangibles which we do not consider property at all. 
Among the Maoris of New Zealand, and the Fiji, a 
child may inherit the obligation to avenge some wrong 


75 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


done his father. Or a child may inherit the obligation 
to pay his parent’s debts, as among the Igorotes in the 
Philippines. Shamanism, or the priestly office, is inherited 
in some tribes. A Kaffir eldest son inherits the knowledge 
and right to practice medicine from his father. Among 
the Wakamba, the Yuchi of California, and the Indians 
of Guiana in South America, rain-making is a profession 
which descends from father to son. 

In Polynesia, the power, office, and lands of a chief 
theoretically pass into the hands of his son at birth. The 
infant is even considered of one rank higher than his 
father in the tribal hierarchy. The father, however, 
continues to exercise the powers and prerogatives of a 
chief until the son is old enough to take them over. 

Chieftainships are inherited in many lands. In East 
Africa, a son may lose the right to be his father’s successor 
if he is not considered worthy of that important position. 
He may actually have to fight his brothers for it, jealousy 
and intrigue being as common as they are in civilized 
royal families. 

In New Guinea, the art of tatooing is handed down 
from mother to daughter. In Fiji, the practice of pro¬ 
fessional abortion is passed from mother to daughter and 
the knowledge of midwifery is kept in families and handed 
on in them. 


76 



FIVE 


ADOLESCENCE AND INITIATION 
INTO TRIBAL ACTIVITY 

B ABIES who are allowed to live, or who survive the 
birth rites, are invariably treated more affection¬ 
ately in a primitive tribe than they are in the average 
civilized family. Untutored savages consider it incredible 
callousness to deny a child anything he cries for. They 
rarely use any form of corporal punishment—in many 
tribes, never. Zuni women regard the white women on 
the reservation as exceedingly vulgar because they spank 
their children. In New Guinea, where the people were 
until recently cannibalistic savages, the natives nearly 
lynched a white trader who was beating his child. 

Indeed, little or no coercion along any line is exerted 
upon the children. The Mohave, for example, believes 
that individuals are bom with certain aptitudes or gifts 
that will assert themselves in time, and that it is therefore 
wrong to try to force a child to do anything. He will 
of his own accord exert himself when his interests and 
capacities are ready. Many tribes have similar beliefs. 


77 


MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


Education, as we conceive it, is completely lacking in 
primitive tribes. A child acquires most of his knowledge 
from observation and imitation of his elders, as he grows 
up. It may seem to us a haphazard method of instruction, 
but apparently it is as successful in fitting a child for 
the life he is to lead as our own system, if not better. 
He learns by doing and observing. At a much earlier 
age than a civilized child, he understands the processes 
of nature and the customs of the community. 

Much of this knowledge is gained in play with other 
children outside of the home and family circle. Their 
games and play imitate the economic activities and 
religious ceremonials of the adults in the tribe. At play, 
a primitive child is just as intent on the approval of his 
playmates as our own children are in their play. This 
tendency leads some tribes to take their children out of 
the family household at an early age and train them in 
the tribal customs and traditions in separate boys’ and 
girls’ clubs. 

Early in life the children begin to take part in the 
economic life of the tribe. Seminole Indian babies learn 
to do domestic work by the time they are four years old. 
Eight- and ten-year-old Yukaghir children help in the 
household. Girls learn to sew and cook, while boys go 
hunting and fishing. In Africa, the little girl begins to 


78 



ADOLESCENCE AND INITIATION 


help her mother in the gardens when very young, and 
the little boys mind the goats and lambs and scare away 
the baboons from the crops. Kaffir and Samoan children 
six or seven years old carry the younger children about 
on their hips or backs, and a Kaffir boy of four can set 
a most intricate bird trap. A Chukchi boy of five knows 
how to harness a reindeer, and does the job alone by the 
time he is a year older. 

In most tribes no formal education takes place. The 
child absorbs what he can by observation of the behavior 
of those around him. As he grows older, there is 
sometimes a little informal instruction by the parents 
into the special techniques of the tribe. Fathers may take 
the boys fishing or hunting and show them how such 
things are done in the tribe. Mothers may instruct the 
girls in the domestic crafts that they have not already 
learned. 

A child is taught or absorbs the conventions of behavior 
that he must observe. He learns whether it is correct 
to receive his food in both hands or in one, whether a 
spoon should be held bowl upward or downward, where 
he is permitted to sit or stand. A little Kaffir child is 
told not to be greedy when visiting, as though he came 
from a family that did not have enough to eat. He 
learns to show deference to older people and to prominent 


7$ 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


persons, and what words of address are proper to use 
and when to use them. American Indian children were 
told by the old men of the tribe to be generous and kind. 
They were given long lectures on their duties and the 
conduct expected of them They were warned to revere 
the supernatural powers, and instructed in much of the 
tribe’s folk-lore. 

From this informal instruction the child soon learns 
what is considered right and proper in his particular 
tribe. Nowhere, even in the crudest cultures, does he 
escape the efforts of his elders to make him conform to 
customs prevalent in the tribe in which he happens 
to be born. Conformity is enforced by public opinion; 
ridicule is visited upon one who does not follow the 
accepted forms This method is remarkably effective, 
because tribal folk are sensitive to the approval or dis¬ 
approval of the group in which they live. Since in these 
relatively small tribal groups, people know each other 
intimately, group disapproval is usually all that is needed 
to keep the members in line. In most cases it is reinforced 
by fear. A violation of the more important taboos and 
customs is believed to bring harm to the tribe and death 
to the individual who commits it. The anger and 
vengeance of the tribal gods are a powerful deterrent to 
actions which the tribe considers wrong. 


80 



ADOLESCENCE AND INITIATION 


In addition to this hit-or-miss instruction, nearly every 
tribe makes an effort to impart to its children an under¬ 
standing of its tribal traditions and practices in a more 
formal and impressive way. It tries, as we do, to impress 
upon its children the sacredness of its institutions and 
customs, and their superiority over those of any other 
people. We have put our beliefs, religions, philosophies, 
and sciences into writing. The more unsophisticated 
peoples hand their experiences on through oral traditions. 
They usually set aside a definite period in the life of a 
member when he is put in full possession of that which 
they consider most valuable and most sacred. Such 
occasions are accompanied by elaborate ceremonies and 
rituals. 

It is perpetually surprising and sometimes highly 
amusing to civilized people to observe the enormous 
amount of time that tribal folk spend in ceremonial. 
In many South Sea Island tribes the ceremonies con¬ 
nected with launching a boat on a trading expedition, take 
much longer than the actual construction of the boat. 
Among the Zuni, the fondness for ceremonial is carried 
so far that there is scarcely a day in the year that is not 
set aside for some ceremony. 

The age or period which different peoples select for 
introducing their children into membership in the com- 


81 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


munity and into the tribal secrets and traditions is quite 
arbitrary. Some wait until a comparatively mature age, 
while others initiate boys of four to seven years into the 
mysteries of the tribal religious life. But certain steps 
or stages in the life of an individual from birth to death 
are always emphasized by different peoples as of great 
significance to the welfare of both the individual and the 
tribe. The steps are not uniform, however, for some 
tribes totally ignore or notice only slightly the very events 
which others consider of utmost importance. 

The way different tribes treat their children on the 
verge of social and physical maturity is especially arbitrary. 
A time is set by custom when the tribal mysteries are 
revealed, and recognition of the steps achieved in the 
learning and growing-up process takes place. This event 
is known as initiation. The ceremonies of some peoples 
emphasize the social maturity of their children and 
completely disregard their physical maturity. The ritual 
is that by which the child is formally introduced into 
the tribe as an adult member. They do not necessarily 
occur at the time of puberty, but frequently much earlier 
or much later. In one community the ceremonies may 
be more or less celebrations of certain achievements; in 
another, they may mark the youth’s entrance into the 
secret societies or professions. 


82 



ADOLESCENCE AND INITIATION 


Some tribes pay ro attention to either social or physical 
adulthood; among these are the Andaman Islanders, 
some Melanesian peoples, and some American Indian 
tribes. Many others place the whole emphasis on the 
physical change in boys and girls at puberty. Their 
ceremonials are a recognition of that change, rather than 
the social aspect of growing up. The time selected for 
them usually coincides with the time of puberty. How¬ 
ever, both aspects are frequently combined—initiation 
into the tribe and social adulthood, and physical maturity 
and admission to adult sex life. 

The ceremonial recognition of social maturity is often 
accompanied by definite external changes in dress or orna¬ 
ments. A Hopi girl at this time does her hair into knots 
over her ears. In other tribes both youths and maidens are 
tatooed in special ways. Tatooing in some Eskimo and 
North American tribes is a sign that a girl is marriageable. 
In many tribes it is also a mark of social distinction. Men 
are tatooed for personal achievements or for some special 
office in the tribe. In Papua and Fiji a boy at this time 
begins to wear a loin-cloth. Some Papuan girls carry 
a basket as a sign of maturity. Among the Todas, of 
India, a boy’s ears must be pierced before he may enter 
the precincts of the sacred cattle. 

Social initiation is sometimes a sort of reward for certain 


83 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


achievements. When a Cheyenne or Sioux boy killed 
his first buffalo, or touched an enemy’s horse on his first 
raid, or performed some similar feat of daring, his father 
made a public announcement of the event and gave 
away horses. 

Admission to the secret societies that exist in many 
tribes, to the professional groups like those of the 
tatooists, to the priesthood, or to the special handicrafts 
also occurs at the time of initiation. Nor are the girls 
overlooked. An Algonkin or Igorote girl may then 
become a priestess, or in Fiji she may become a midwife, 
or in American Indian tribes she may enter certain guilds 
or societies. 

Where such ceremonies have not taken place before 
puberty, a separation of boys and girls occurs in many 
tribes. They live in club-houses apart from their families, 
and brothers and sisters must observe more than ever the 
taboos on their speech and conduct. It often means a 
considerable disruption of the family ties. This is 
especially true in Melanesia and Australia. Initiation 
forms new bonds between boys or girls of the same age, 
to the exclusion of other ties, much as our college 
fraternities and sororities do. In the Banks Islands all 
initiated men eat and sleep in club-houses apart from the 
women. Kaffir children are separated from their mothers 


84 



ADOLESCENCE AND INITIATION 


before puberty, at seven to twelve years of age, and live 
in boys’ or girls’ huts. In Australia, all parental discipline 
for boys ends when they are ten, and tribal discipline 
begins. They live in separate huts with the men. 

Some tribes that place emphasis on puberty and sexual 
maturity devote most of their ceremonial attention to the 
girl—others to the boy. The North American Indians 
pay no attention to the boys’ attainment of puberty, but 
often have elaborate rites to celebrate the girl’s physical 
maturity. They recognized the boys’ social adulthood 
at an earlier or later age. 

The Zuni, whose lives are filled with ceremonies, 
initiate boys of six and seven into the mysteries of the 
ceremonial groups. An adult man acts as sponsor for 
the boy in these ceremonies, which take place at a distance 
from the village. The little boys are brought face to 
face with the sacred masked dancers, who are masked 
men representing the gods. The dancers whip the boys 
until they cry, and then reveal themselves as the fathers, 
brothers, and uncles of the initiates. The boys must 
never reveal to the women of the tribe who the masked 
dancers are, and are warned that if they do their heads 
will be cut off and kicked into the lake at the edge of 
the world. After this ceremony, the Zuni boy is thought 
fit to enter the sacred dance house after death. 


85 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


In Melanesia, too, the boys are initiated into the tribal 
mysteries without reference to their physical maturity. 
The young men of the Plains Indians tried to have a 
vision to mark their attainment of manhood. They 
fasted and purified themselves in sweat-houses to obtain 
one; often they were middle-aged before they succeeded. 
Some men never had a vision, but those who did became 
prominent and highly respected persons in the tribe. 
Both men and women of the Omaha sought to have 
visions. 

The ceremonies by which various tribes recognize the 
physical maturity of their girls have different backgrounds. 
Among some peoples they emphasize sex attraction and 
the fact that the girl is now marriageable. In others, 
they have a religious significance. Those of the Omaha 
and Maidu Indians were in part rehearsals of the creation 
stories of the tribe. Frequently the ceremonies mark a 
new social status. The girl, who up to this time has 
been under parental control, breaks away and becomes 
entirely independent. In Rhodesia, she throws her gar¬ 
ments on her parent’s roof as a sign of independence, 
and a period of license and sexual promiscuity follows. 
Theft and sexual freedom are permitted the girls of some 
Papuan tribes at this time. A girl of the Naga of 
Manipur is free to go where she pleases, and may even 


86 



ADOLESCENCE AND INITIATION 


move to another village if she likes. Ceremonies of some 
tribes represent all three aspects of the event—marriage¬ 
ability, social freedom, and religious significance. 

The treatment accorded the adolescent girl varies. In 
most tribes it includes rests, baths, steaming, roasting, 
and nearly always fasting. Among the American Indians, 
the girl is usually not considered unclean, but is thought 
to be in close contact with the supernatural powers. 
Sometimes mysterious powers are supposed to reside in 
the girl herself at this time. In any case, she is believed 
to exercise occult influences, and everything she says or 
does is significant to herself and to her whole future life. 
Whatever she touches is dangerous to others, and all 
her actions affect the rest of the tribe. The Dene of 
British Columbia, who are most extreme, require that she 
remain in seclusion for one to three years. She may not 
eat meat or fish, or bathe in certain streams or lakes. 
During this period, her father distributes gifts to the 
tribe, to teach her liberality. However, she is not con¬ 
sidered impure in any way. The restrictions imposed 
on her are somewhat similar to those placed on a warrior 
of the tribe during his first four campaigns. 

A girl of the Maidu of California goes into only partial 
seclusion at puberty. There is a public ceremonial at 
night which she attends, and at which she sings and 

87 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


dances and feasts. In the daytime, she stays in a special 
hut provided for her use, or goes into the forest to receive 
instruction from her female relatives in the tribal ethics 
and traditions. She is admonished to be industrious, 
chaste, liberal, and virtuous in every respect. After the 
ceremonies are over, she goes off to the hills alone for 
several days as a sign of her new independence. 

The Seri of California also have a puberty feast for 
the girl, at which her face is painted with special signs, 
hereditary in the female line of her family. Then she 
is free to marry whomever she chooses. Her relatives 
build a house for her in which she lives, in a trial marriage 
for a year with the man of her choice. Throughout the 
year she receives special attentions from all her prospective 
husband’s friends, and from other young men in the 
tribe as well. If, after a year of experiment and compari¬ 
son, she is still satisfied with her choice, he becomes a 
permanent guest in her house. If she later grows tired 
of him, she can at any time ask him to leave. 

When Athabaskan Indian girls arrive at puberty, an 
important ceremony takes place. Four nights in succes¬ 
sion the girl and some boy of the tribe dramatize the 
culture hero and his grandmother in the story of the 
tribe’s origin. They believe that the ceremony of enact¬ 
ing this tribal drama brings good fortune to the whole 


88 



ADOLESCENCE AND INITIATION 


community and secures a happy and honorable life 
for the girl. 

The Shasta Indians have an elaborate ten-day cere¬ 
mony, during which the girl’s conduct is carefully regu¬ 
lated. She is secluded, and has to observe food taboos. 
She must not come near a fire nor see others, but must 
sit in her hut facing the east. At the end of four days 
she must perform some difficult task, such as gathering 
firewood from the mountains for the whole village. That 
night a feast is held at which she must dance until 
exhausted. On the last night of the ten days, complete 
license is given to both men and women; the festive 
occasion ends in a war-dance in which everybody takes 
part. Not until all this is over is the girl considered 
marriageable. The ceremony is a severe drain on the 
resources of her father, for he has to provide feasts for 
the entire village. 

Training for personal virtues by endurance tests of 
one nature or another is usually connected with the 
rites. A Cheyenne girl held a vigil for four nights that 
she might be strong. A Maidu girl sleeps on rocks 
for the same reason. She also fasts and goes into seclusion 
so that she will not be too gay or talkative in later life. 
A Shuswap girl undergoes several physical ordeals to 
prepare herself to withstand the future pains of childbirth. 


89 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


The idea of impurity at puberty, accompanied by very 
elaborate types of ceremony, is common in many African 
and Australian tribes. These practices come of varied 
origins, but in all of them the sex emphasis is predominant. 
The Baganda in Africa explain puberty as a result of 
union with a supernatural being. It is called a marriage, 
and in their ceremonies the girl is dressed as a bride. 
She is given sex instruction by her mother and the old 
women of the tribe, as a part of her training for life and 
real marriage. In some parts of the Torres Straits, the 
moon is believed responsible for the physical changes in 
the girl. 

Similar beliefs, though often confused and complicated, 
underlie the ceremonies of mutilation and defloration 
which mark many puberty rites. These practices on 
girls are frequently found in Africa, in Australia, among 
some Oceanic tribes, and occasionally in South America. 
They are rare in North America and Asia. 

In many tribes these performances are thought to 
insure the well-being of the girl, to make her strong or 
to remove uncleanness. Others, like the Masai and the 
Zulu in Africa, think that they make her chaste after 
her marriage, or promote her fertility. Among the 
Volans of the Cochin area an operation is performed to 
make the girl marriageable. After it has taken place, it 


90 



ADOLESCENCE AND INITIATION 


is announced that she can now marry; puberty and 
seclusion ceremonies follow it. Girls of the Nandi tribe 
in Africa are secluded for two months while they undergo 
intricate purification and defloration rites, though they 
are not considered impure. The Nandi warriors go 
through a similar process. In other tribes, the rites are 
supposed to add to the girl's sex attraction. 

Australian tribes, such as the Arunta, are the most 
radical in their treatment of both girls and boys, and 
their ceremonies the most elaborate. Some of them 
scarify and paint their girls, and nearly all of them 
practice some form of ceremonial defloration. These 
tribes are also the most extreme in their ideas of the girl's 
impurity at this time. They require her to go half a 
mile away from the camp or village, and to wear twigs 
on her head to warn men of her uncleanliness. She is 
carefully watched and guarded to keep her from being 
a danger to anyone. Although Australian women are 
thus initiated into physical maturity, they are not allowed 
to take any part in the religious and political life of the 
tribe. 

The Kaffirs believe their girls are unclean; they will 
not permit them to drink nor touch milk. They are not 
secluded, however, and no ceremonial attention is paid 
them at this time. 


91 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


Many other tribes have only purification rites. The 
Dieguenos of California and the Missouri Indians 
toasted their girls and threw seeds over their bodies. 
Other peoples bury a girl in hot sand or steam her. The 
Veddas of Ceylon, the Todas of India, some Bantu tribes, 
certain California Indians, and a number of others have 
no taboos against women’s uncleanness, and pay no 
attention to puberty. 

In the past, the Samoans and Hawaiians were also 
licentious, with defloration rituals and ceremonies. There 
is even a hint of religious prostitution in their practices, 
perhaps imported from the continental civilizations of 
India and China. In Samoa, one girl was selected to be 
“Taupo”—next in rank to the chief. She had to be a 
virgin, which was proved by a public defloration. After¬ 
wards she became the wife of the chief. 

In a few tribes girls are trained and dedicated to 
religious service. Either complete chastity is required of 
them or they become the concubines of the gods and the 
priests. Baganda girls who are dedicated to the tribal 
gods are supposed to keep the sacred fires burning and 
to guard the holy objects of the tribe. They are often 
set aside for this temple service by mothers who had 
promised a female child to the temple if the gods would 
intercede to overcome their barrenness. When such a 


92 



ADOLESCENCE AND INITIATION 


girl reaches puberty, the god decides whom she is to 
marry. Among the Ewe of East Africa, girls dedicated 
to the temple learn to dance and chant. They are said 
to be married to the god for three years. Their social 
prestige is much enhanced by their temple service. 

Similar customs flourish among the African Herero 
and some Congo tribes. Some Pacific Island and 
Hawaiian tribes have had priestesses; it is not known 
whether or not chastity was demanded of them. 

Initiation rites for boys and young men in primitive 
tribes are as varied as those for the girls. As we have 
seen, some of them are purely social, and mark the joining 
of secret societies and tribal councils, while others are 
definitely a recognition of the boy’s physical maturity 
and his admittance to the sex rights and duties of the 
tribe. 

Among the American Indians, boys went through a 
process of physical hardening as a preparation for man¬ 
hood. They took cold baths in the river every morning 
and practiced abstinence and self-restraint. They partici¬ 
pated in warlike or athletic exercises, such as racing, 
wrestling, and leaping. Each boy received long lectures 
from the old men on the moral qualities he should develop. 
He was told that shame and disgrace would follow any 
lapse from virtue; that he must not steal; that he must 


93 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


be chaste and not commit adultery; that he must not be 
lazy, nor boast, nor lie; that he must be brave and hospi¬ 
table; he must not be quarrelsome. 

A young Indian of Guiana had to clear a piece of 
forest and show his prowess as a hunter and fisherman by 
bringing in stores of food, before he was ready for 
marriage. Sometimes there are changes of dress to mark 
the change of status. Papuan and Fiji boys start to wear 
the loin cloth as a “band of manhood.” The Jibaro 
boys of Ecuador at this time begin to wear full male dress 
and are allowed to smoke. 

There are no definite puberty ceremonials for boys 
among the American Indians; but in many other parts 
of the world the physical change in boys is made the 
occasion for elaborate rites of circumcision, tatooing, 
mutilation, and painting of the body. 

Circumcision is a very widespread practice in tribal 
life. It was originally, and still is in many places, 
regarded as a preparation for sex life, though it has 
sometimes become only a mark of social maturity and 
does not coincide with the time of physical maturity. 

A Kaffir male is considered a boy all his life if he 
remains uncircumcised. He cannot take part in the tribal 
councils, nor hold property or be a warrior. No woman 
will marry him. Many primitive peoples share their 


94 



ADOLESCENCE AND INITIATION 


belief that circumcision helps procreation and that barren¬ 
ness and sterility will surely result if it is omitted. 

Masai boys, in Africa, go to the tribal medicine-man 
for circumcision. Then they bathe and take an ox-hide, 
which they carry with them to sit on for four days. 
At the end of that time they are tonsured and dressed 
as men. A Thonga boy is isolated for three months, 
during which he is given moral instruction by a lecturer 
who climbs a near-by tree and talks to him on man¬ 
hood. 

These rites in some Australian tribes are most severe 
and elaborate. All the boys of a certain age are initiated 
together at a tribal assembly. Each novice has two in¬ 
structors with whom he goes into seclusion. He is roasted 
near a fire and has to hunt food all day until he is ex¬ 
hausted. In the evening he undergoes a ceremony in 
which several teeth are knocked out by a man disguised 
as a god. He must show no signs of feeling during this 
mutilation. He is then instructed in the power of the 
god. His body is painted white, and he is circumcised 
by the old men of the tribe. Following this, he is told 
about the marriage laws, the boundaries of their country, 
and what he may eat. Finally, the sacred objects and 
magic practices of the tribe are revealed to him. The 
ceremony lasts for days. When it is all over, the initiate 

95 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


is a member of the tribe, but he is still under the control 
of the tribal elders. He has merely substituted tribal 
control for parental. 

The old men of these tribes control all marriages, which 
cannot be performed without their consent. They do not 
allow the young men to marry until they are thirty years 
old. Then they are given to the widows and old women, 
while the men of forty-five and fifty marry the young 
girls of ten and twelve, who were betrothed to them 
when the girls were in infancy. 

Most Polynesian and Melanesian tribes have no special 
initiations, but there are rules for entrance into the secret 
societies. The boy has a probationary period before he 
can enter them, during which he receives training in 
the physical and moral qualities expected of him, and 
knowledge of the tribe’s traditions and precedents. 

The education of a chief’s son among these tribes is 
more complicated than that of the other boys, and begins 
earlier. He undergoes a period of seclusion for training 
in the art of fishing. When he emerges, his father gives 
a feast to the entire tribe. In Fiji, the son of a chief 
goes into seclusion for three days after he has killed his 
first man. He is forbidden to lie down or sleep or 
change his clothes during this seclusion. 

In other tribes a father hands his son over to a maternal 


96 



ADOLESCENCE AND INITIATION 


uncle for training. The boy is instructed in all the virtues, 
taught the degree of kinship permitted in marriage, and 
the use of magic for love spells and charms. After a 
month’s seclusion, he is washed in the sea, anointed with 
cocoanut oil, and is ready for adult life. He stays three 
more months with his uncle while he receives proposals 
of marriage from the girls of the tribe. When the three 
months are up his parents give a feast, and present gifts 
to the girl he has accepted for his bride. 

The Samoans perform very painful operations of 
circumcision and sub-incision on adolescent boys. When 
a boy is seventeen years old, he joins the society of un¬ 
married men without a title, but he hopes some day to 
earn a matai name, which means “owner of a title and 
head of the household.” He will then become a mem¬ 
ber of the Fono or assembly of head-men. There is 
only a limited number of such men, and as everyone covets 
a title in the Samoan caste heirarchy, there is keen com¬ 
petition among the young men for such an appointment. 

After puberty, the limitations on the sex conduct of 
the young people vary considerably in tribal society. The 
attitude toward sex is distinctly unlike our own, sex 
relations and marriage usually being more or less sepa¬ 
rated. Marriage is for the purpose of establishing a 
family. It gives a man status in the community. It forms 

97 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


a contract between two families, and imposes many new 
duties and obligations on those entering it. 

Many tribes emphasize chastity, such as the Omaha, 
the Sioux, and many Siberian tribes. The Veddas of 
Ceylon, the Igorotes of Luzon, and certain African and 
Australian tribes even consider unchastity a crime that 
is punishable with death. In others, chastity makes the 
girl more desirable and brings a higher price for her. 
The North American Indians seem to place the highest 
value on chastity, and the African tribes generally the 
lowest. 

On the other hand, pre-marital virginity is almost un¬ 
known in many tribes, and the widest sexual freedom 
is permitted before marriage. In New Guinea, great 
decorum is observed in public, but secret meetings of 
boys and girls at night are quite proper. In Samoa and 
the Trobriand Islands, no sex restrictions are imposed 
from earliest childhood, except those of kinship. Little 
boys and girls play together at sexual games. As soon 
as they grow up, the girl takes a series of more or less 
permanent lovers, with whom they live openly in the 
bachelors’ huts. Sometimes an attachment of this kind 
grows into marriage, while in other cases, a boy and a 
girl who have never known each other may marry, after 
having had numerous individual love affairs with others. 


98 



ADOLESCENCE AND INITIATION 


After the marriage, strict fidelity is expected of both, 
though it is not always lived up to. But what was open 
and perfectly correct before marriage becomes illicit and 
disgraceful afterwards. 

Among the Masai, groups of young girls live with the 
warriors in the bachelor club-houses as long as they like. 
When they grow tired of the life, they go home and 
marry. The only restriction seems to be that a girl whose 
marriage has been arranged for must not cohabit with 
her fiance. As in the Trobriand Islands, when the mar¬ 
riage has taken place, the former freedom ceases. 

Conduct which would make a girl an outcast in our 
society, does not affect her social standing or marriage¬ 
ability at all in tribal communities. The double standard 
does not exist. Where freedom is permitted, it is to both 
sexes. 

The groups among which this freedom is allowed are 
always definitely prescribed. Any violations of the kin¬ 
ship regulations or taboos are serious crimes, and are met 
with extreme punishment. And since there is such a clear 
distinction between the conduct which is permissible before 
marriage and the behavior expected after it, the stability 
of the family is not impaired by this premarital freedom. 


99 



SIX 


DAILY LIFE IN THE TRIBE 

T RIBAL families must ever be occupied with man¬ 
kind’s all-important task of gaining a livelihood. 
They never philosophize about it, but take it for granted. 
The tribe’s conscious activities and organization are cen¬ 
tered on the problem of getting food; the daily lives of 
its members revolving around their economic pursuits, 
just as in more civilized communities. 

One thinks of the American Indian as a savage whose 
chief occupation was warfare and whose greatest joy was 
the scalping of his enemies. George Bird Grinnell, in 
a book called The Cheyenne Indians, has revealed an 
entirely different and much truer picture of Indian life. 
He studied the daily life of this Indian tribe in the days 
when the buffalo still roamed the western plains in large 
numbers. He pictures the normal peaceful life of the 
Cheyenne before the white man’s civilization made havoc 
of the native culture. 

A Cheyenne camp was organized chiefly for the buffalo 


100 


DAILY LIFE IN THE TRIBE 


hunt, which was the tribe’s most important means of live¬ 
lihood. Their tents or lodges of buffalo skins were set 
up in a great circle, with the open end always facing east. 

Before sunrise in the morning, the women of the tribe 
emerged from the camp, where they had already kindled 
the fires, and went to the river or spring for the day’s 
supply of water. The men and boys appeared soon 
after and rushed to the river for their daily plunge. Some 
of the more hardy ones even kept this up during the 
winter months, when they had to break the ice before 
they could bathe. 

The women, who did not take a morning bath, in the 
meantime prepared breakfast. Some of the younger boys 
attended to the horses. They took out to graze those that 
had been tied near the tents all night, and put others in 
their places, ready for an unexpected attack or similar 
emergency. When the meal was finished, the camp crier 
began to make his rounds, shouting out the commands of 
the chiefs in regard to the day’s buffalo hunt, or an¬ 
nouncing that the camp would soon be moved, or that 
there would be a dance that night, or that some father 
was giving away horses in honor of his son’s achievement 
on the hunt. People came out of their lodges to listen 
and discuss the news, as we do when the newsboy calls 
an “extra.” 


101 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


During the morning, some of the younger women and 
girls might go in groups of two or three to the woods 
to gather roots and berries and firewood. The older 
women were often invited by a special messenger to 
help make a new lodge or tent for a bride. This busi¬ 
ness usually lasted until nightfall. It was the occasion 
for much friendly gossip and conversation among the 
women gathered together for the work. The talk fre¬ 
quently turned on what an easy time the newly-wed girl 
would have, because her mother was giving her furniture 
for the lodge and her aunts and cousins everything else 
she needed. The number of horses her father had given 
her would also be discussed at length. 

The women who were not helping with the new lodge 
were often at a meeting of the women’s quilling society. 
They ornamented robes, lodge covers, and other leather 
articles with artistic designs worked with the quills of 
porcupines. To be a member of this exclusive society, 
a woman had to give proof of exceptional skill and crafts¬ 
manship in the work. The members were as highly es¬ 
teemed for their skill as the men who had distinguished 
themselves for bravery in warfare. The quilling had to 
be done in definitely prescribed ways and was accom¬ 
panied by considerable ceremony. 

When the young girls returned from the berry-picking 
102 



DAILY LIFE IN THE TRIBE 


or wood-gathering, they often found a group of their 
suitors waiting near their fathers’ lodges for a chance 
to talk to them. A Cheyenne girl frequently had half 
a dozen or more young men as suitors and was courted 
for years before she consented to marry. 

The children of the tribe played together during the 
day at a short distance from where their mothers were 
working. Their games were imitations of the activities 
of the grown-ups. They played at camping with dolls 
and miniature lodges, at war, or at buffalo hunting. They 
often “played house,” mimicking the domestic customs 
of their parents, never having husbands on account of 
tribal exogamy, and using the younger children and even 
the puppies for babies. 

The men spent most of the days on the hunt. A 
young married man often gave his share of the meat to 
his mother-in-law, to whom, according to the tribal ta¬ 
boos, he was not allowed to speak. This was considered 
a courteous act on his part. 

In the evening, the real life of the camp began. It was 
frequently spent in feasting, music, and dancing. In one 
lodge, a group of young men and women might have a 
social dance, as distinguished from a ceremonial one with 
religious significance. In another lodge, the medicine¬ 
man might preside over a prayer meeting, and sing songs 

103 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


to the spirits, imploring their help. The older men often 
gathered to hear an expert story-teller especially invited 
to furnish entertainment for the evening. The young 
husband who had given the meat to his mother-in-law 
now enjoyed the fruit of his generosity. He was at a 
feast in his own lodge, to which his special friends had 
been invited and for which his mother-in-law had cooked 
the meat and other food. Such a feast was the occasion 
for the observance of elaborate etiquette. The guests 
refrained from eating until a sacrificial offering of meat 
was made to the four points of the compass, and only 
the most correct and formal table manners were ever 
allowed. 

The days of the Cheyenne varied little from this pat¬ 
tern except when they moved camp or were at war with 
a neighboring tribe. 

Let us now turn to the Antipodes. Life in a village 
on one of the islands of Melanesia, which are just north 
of Australia, presents a different story. The climate is 
tropical and the people live by cultivating gardens of 
yams and by fishing. Their houses are of bamboo, vary¬ 
ing in dimensions with the size of the family. Polygamy 
is practiced among them, and where a man’s several 
wives and their younger children occupy one dwelling, 
the house is very large. Some of them are as much as 


104 



DAILY LIFE IN THE TRIBE 


thirty feet high, with smaller huts for each wife and her 
young offspring within it. 

The older boys and girls do not live with their mothers, 
but in club-houses of their own. Occasionally a man’s 
married sons also have their wives’ huts within the large 
family residence. The men themselves live in their own 
club-houses and go home only to eat their meals and 
visit their wives at night. Besides the family residences, 
the village is made up of the young boys’ and girls’ club¬ 
houses, the men’s club-houses, and the sacred clubs of the 
ghost societies, in which the paraphernalia of the men’s 
secret societies are kept and the initiation ceremonies and 
meetings take place. The latter buildings are usually 
at some distance from the other houses of the village. 

The women in the Melaneisan tribes are looked down 
on as inferiors. Their place is in the home, while the 
men’s place is in their club-houses. The wives prepare the 
meals for their husbands, though they never eat together; 
the woman merely serves her husband and looks on while 
he eats. There is no family life like that of the Cheyenne, 
for even the children leave their mothers before they are 
ten years old. 

The men and women carry on the daily work in sepa¬ 
rate groups. The garden patches, which the men own, 
are sometimes cultivated by the whole family together. 

105 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


At other times, the men leave the houses while the women 
attend to their domestic labor, and the women remain 
indoors while the men are doing their work. In the 
tribal dances, too, the men and women dance in separate 
groups. 

This distinction is most rigid in regard to the secret 
societies; women are never allowed to become members. 
Most of the activities of village life are concerned with 
the social prestige which comes to the man or boy who 
has enough property to buy initiation into one of them 
or to be promoted to the next higher rank. The suc¬ 
cessful man in Melanesia is he who has enough pigs and 
mats and shells to pay for the privilege of becoming a 
member of a secret society. A father gives his son a pig 
when he is born to begin the accumulation of property 
for this purpose. All the relatives help, for they reap 
the reflected glory of his success. 

Paradoxically enough, a husband and wife welcome 
a daughter rather than a son. A son means more hard 
work for everybody in the family, in order to give him 
a respectable position in the community and so keep up 
the family’s prestige. A daughter, on the other hand, 
will enrich the family exchequer on her betrothal, by 
the pigs and mats her husband’s family must contribute. 
No wonder parents betroth their daughter in infancy to 
106 



DAILY LIFE IN THE TRIBE 


a propertied man who will pay for her in installments! 
Furthermore, the Melanesians are a matrilineal society. 
A son does not inherit his father’s land and fruit trees 
and canoe; they go to a nephew, a sister’s son. 

The activities of the ghost societies sometimes strike 
terror to the hearts of the other villagers. From their 
mysterious precincts, where the women and children never 
dare go, strange cries and sounds suddenly arise. The 
women and children run into their houses in great fear, 
for this is a signal that the spirits of the dead have come 
to visit with the members of the society. If one of the 
ghosts should see a woman or child, it would supposedly 
mean certain death. Actually, of course, the fantastically 
dressed figures, with grotesque faces and immense tall 
head-dresses, which come forth from the club-houses, are 
only the members in disguise. They are setting out on 
an expedition for the purpose of terrorizing the village, 
beating and robbing the uninitiated, destroying their 
garden patches, and generally asserting their power in 
the tribe. 

Numerous festivals fill the rounds of Melanesian life. 
There are feasts when a girl marries, or when a canoe is 
launched on a trading expedition, but the greatest and 
most important affairs are those given by a man in honor 
of some ancestor. These feasts are essential to his ad- 

107 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


vancement in the ghost society to which he belongs. There 
is a hierarchy of steps within it, much like our Masonic 
degrees, which a man must climb to achieve honor in his 
village. Each step requires the contribution of more 
property. According to traditional belief, it is the super¬ 
natural power of his departed ancestors which enables 
him to accumulate property. He can only retain his power 
by giving a feast in honor of the ancestor whenever he 
himself, or his son, or any male relative achieves a 
higher rank in the ghost society. The most lavish feast 
is given when he reaches the highest rank in the scale, 
to show his gratitude to the spirits for the help they have 
given him. 

The whole thing becomes a vicious circle in which 
all the members of a family work to secure pigs and 
mats and shells to pay for feasts to obtain super¬ 
natural help in acquiring more property, so as to rise 
higher in rank and give more feasts. The whole economic 
life of a Melanesian village centers around the accumula¬ 
tion of property for this purpose. 

Daily life in the Trobriand Islands, which are coral- 
reef islands off the southeastern coast of New Guinea, is 
similar in some respects. Women are not inferior to the 
men in these tribes, however, and they are not separated 
from the men by residence requirements. A man and 
108 



DAILY LIFE IN THE TRIBE 


wife and their children live together in a family hut and 
share in the community life. 

The Trobriand tribes, like the Melanesians, live by 
fishing and gardening, but the men and women fish to¬ 
gether and work together in the garden patches. The 
day’s work in a Trobriand village begins early. Break¬ 
fast is a scanty meal of cold “left-overs” from the night 
before. When it is finished, the men sometimes depart 
on more extended fishing expeditions, while the women 
remain in the shallow shore waters, shell-fishing. On 
other days they set out together to work in the garden. 
They go about other tasks, too, during the cool hours of 
the morning. The women do not stay at home because 
of the babies, but take them along on the berry-picking 
or fruit-gathering, and lay them aside on a mat while they 
work. The men usually take care of the more strenuous 
labor, but both stop to rest during the heat of the day. 
When evening comes, a wife returns to her household 
duties. She has to cook the main meal of the day, while 
her husband plays with the children and feeds the baby. 
The men rarely help with the cooking, for they dislike to 
do tasks that are known as women’s work. 

Among the Trobrianders a wife is by no means a sub¬ 
missive slave. She is, indeed, completely independent 
of her husband; for, while he owns the house in which 

109 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 


they live, her brothers furnish the food for her and her 
children. The products of her husband’s labor go to 
the support of his sisters and their families. In spite of 
this arrangement, or perhaps because of it, a man and 
wife are usually rather closely united, their family life is 
remarkably harmonious and happy. 

The cooking of the evening meal takes place in the open 
in front of the huts, which stand close together in rows in 
the village. Friendly visiting with the neighbors goes 
on, the events of the day are discussed, and gossip is 
exchanged. It is the hour of relaxation and pleasure for 
the whole village. 

Like nearly every other people, their lives are dotted 
with frequent ceremonies and feasts, in which everyone 
participates. Dancing and singing and religious cere¬ 
monies are the usual entertainment. The chief of the 
village, who holds that office because he is the wealthiest 
man, usually is the host. 

From our survey of many groups, scattered all over 
the world, it should be apparent that the life of primitive 
people is not so easy and uncomplicated as we have been 
wont to imagine, but that, on the contrary, it is intricately 
regulated to the smallest detail. The individual is really 
less free to do as he pleases than are we with our many laws 
and civilized conventions. The conditions of primitive 
110 



DAILY LIFE IN THE TRIBE 


life place his actions under closer scrutiny than is custom¬ 
ary even among the inhabitants of our smallest towns. 
A civilized person could hardly bear to live hemmed in 
by the numberless restrictions, ceremonies, and taboos that 
surround the lives of primitive folk. Tribal or savage life 
is nowhere the free life. Rousseau’s noble, natural sav¬ 
age slinks away to join the company of other mythical 
creatures. 

At the same time, the life of these humble cousins of 
our is not lacking in its own joys and compensations; in 
some instances it has interests which are lacking in our 
own more sophisticated and mechanized existence. 

Although the beginnings of the human family remain 
shrouded in mystery, the domestic arrangements in 
tribal life today are evidence of the great variety of family 
patterns which the human mind has developed through 
the centuries. Every people, primitive or civilized, has 
found its own solution to the problem, in some cases alike 
and in others different. 


x 


ill 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The following works have been of great value to the 

author in preparing this discussion of family life, and 

much added material may be obtained from them. 

Brown, A. R. The Andaman Islanders. 

Codrington, R. H. The Melanesians: Studies in Their 
Anthropology and Folklore. 

Fletcher, A. and La Flexche, F. The Omaha Tribe 
(27th Annual Report of the Bureau of American 
Ethnology). 

Grinnell, G. B. The Cheyenne Indians. 

Junod, H. A. The Life of a South African Tribe 
(2 vols.) 

Kidd, Dudley. Savage Childhood. 

Krocher, A. L. Handbook of the Indians of California 
(Bulletin 78 of Bureau of American Ethnology). 

Lowie, R. H. Primitive Society. 

Malinowski, B. The Sex Life of Savages. 

The Family Life Among Australian Aborigines. 

Mead, M. Coming of Age in Samoa . 

Sollas, W. J. Ancient Hunters and Their Modern Rep¬ 
resentatives. 

Stevenson, M. C. The Zuni Indians (23rd Annual Re¬ 
port of the Bureau of American Ethnology). 

Westermarck, E. The History of Human Marriage. 


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